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AROUND THE FIRE 


Stories ot ^Beginnings: 


HANFORD M. BURR 

f I 

Author of “ Donald McRea ” 


ILLUSTRATIONS FROM OLD WOOD-CUTS 



Association press 

NEW YORK : 124 EAST 28TH STREET 
LONDON: 47 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 
1912 



Copyright , igi2 i 

By the International Committee of Young Men’s 
Christian Associations 



gCI.A312397 


FOREWORD 


W HEN the night is black about the camp- 
fire, and the flames die down, and the 
half-burned embers fall into the ashes, 
we look into the red chamber of romance and see 
the flickering shapes of the men of long ago. The 
silence deepens and the world of today is swal- 
lowed up by that of a yesterday older than his- 
tory. The blood of Angle, Saxon and Jute, Kelt 
and Slav, sings in our brains. Something touches 
our eyes with a magic wand and we see at the 
heart of the fire pictures of the world when man 
was young. The backlog becomes a ruddy screen 
upon which pass and repass the heroes who won 
a world for us by their courage and skill. 

These tales 'go with the moving pictures of 
the backlog. There are more where these came 
from, and the lover of the open fire can read them 
for himself. 

The world of these pictures was young. Every- 
thing had to be learned — everything had to be 
won. But there were giants in those days and 
the Revealer held the guiding torch. Slowly but 
surely they won mastery over harsh nature, 
savage beasts, and even more savage men, but 
greatest of all, mastery over self. 

v 


FOREWORD 


And they were men and women of our own 
race. Their blood runs in our veins. Their home 
was in Angeln, old England, the low-lying land 
where they lingered for awhile before they crossed 
the Great Water to build an empire on which 
the sun never sets. Some of their names were 
passed down from father to son apd mother to 
daughter till they appeared in the Doomsday 
Book of King William, where they can be seen 
now by those who are curious. 

Many of the animals who shared the forest 
primeval with man in Old England have long 
since disappeared, but they have left their bones 
in caves and peat bogs. 

“How Men Found the Great Spirit” has been 
told about many camp-fires. There has been a 
call for more stories of the same kind. Here 
they are, and the writer hopes that others who 
“ see things at night” in the fire will enjoy them, 
and see more for themselves. 

H. M. BURR. 

“THE PINES” 

Springfield, Mass., Dec., 1911. 


vi 


CONTENTS 


Page 

I. The Fire Spirit i 

II. The First Potter i9 

III. The First Gang 29 

IV. The First Chief 47 

V. The Smoke Way 69 

VI. The First Milkman 79 

VII. Rang, the Red Man 87 

VIII. Rang of the Thinking Hand . i03 

IX. The First Sailor ii5 

X. The Garden of Ulma .... 1 23 

XI. Let, the First Artist .... i33 

XII. Sax, the First Musician . . . i45 

XIII. The Call of the Great Water i 5 7 

XIV. The Story of Lup 1 77 

XV. The Wooing of Senna .... i89 

XVI. Hun, the Hunter of White Men i97 

XVII. The Lake Dwellers 2ii 

XVIII. How Men Found the Great 

Spirit 229 

vii 


THE FIRE SPIRIT 


> 






AROUND THE FIRE 

I. THE FIRE SPIRIT 


EFORE the years were counted or the circuit 



JD of the seasons reckoned, man lived where it 
was always summer, and summer heat ruled the 
north land, now ruled by winter cold. As the 
scepter of the Frost King reached farther and 
farther south, men slowly and reluctantly retreated 
from the old homes. But some lingered through 
the fireless winters for the love of the familiar places 
and the beauty of the northern spring and summer. 

Among those who lingered was Ang, the mighty 
hunter. His home was in. a. cave at the . edge of: 
the great forest. It faced the south so that it could 
catch all the scant rays of the winter’s sun. The 
mouth of the cave was partly closed by a screen of 
fir boughs, while a bark slab, torn from a big tree, 
formed a rude door. Inside the cave were bunks 
piled high with dry moss and leaves, with the 
skin of animals which Ang had slain thrown dver 


them. 


It was not yet midwinter, but it was cold, bitter 
cold. As Ang sat in front of his cave, chipping 
knife blades and arrow points from flint, he moved 
from time to time to keep in the feeble light of 


3 


AROUND THE FIRE 


the sun, but it seemed to have little warmth, and 
he shivered and grumbled to himself : “ Every year 
the cold grows stronger. The old men tell of a 
time when it came late and went soon, but that 
must have been long ago. Ugh! but it is cold! 
It gets under my bearskin; it nips my ears and 
numbs my hands. I wish I had taken the long 
journey to the south land, but it was far for the 
woman and the child, and I hoped that the Ice 
Giant would grow old and lose his strength — and 
I was born here; my father and my father’s father 
hunted in these woods and fished in this river, and 
men, like trees, take root.” 

The sun sank into a cold gray cloud in the 
west. The bite of the wind grew sharper. The 
hoarse cough of a child echoed from the cave be- 
hind him, and the dull crooning song of the mother, 
as she tried to warm the sick child at her breast, 
could be heard as the wind was lulled for a 
moment. 

Colder and more cold it grew, but Ang would not 
enter the cave. He could not bear to hear the 
troubled breathing of the child or see the face of 
the mother. He dreaded the coming of the grim 
White Spirit for this, his last child. Sometimes 
he fancied he could hear him rushing through the 
woods above the cliff, and feel the chill of his 
breath on his face. Had he no other food but 
children, this dread hunter? 

Colder and more cold it grew, but Ang still lin- 
gered. He piled dry moss about his feet and tried 
4 


THE FIRE SPIRIT 


to bring warmth to his numb hands by hammering 
off flakes of flint which he would later shape into 
rough weapons and tools. He struck two flints 
together in a kind of dumb fury. It was a glancing 
blow, and one of the flints dropped into the dry 
moss at his feet with a flicker of sparks. A coil 
of gray smoke crept out of the moss like a serpent 
coming out of his hole. A bright spot at its heart 
grew brighter and brighter, and then red flames 
lapped hungrily. 

Ang leaped to his feet in astonishment. At the 
smiting of the flint the Fire Spirit had been born. 
Its breath was the breath of summer. He stretched 
out his hands over the flames, and the cold loosened 
its grip. He touched the flame, and it stung him 
like an angry bee. Clearly the Spirit must not be 
handled. Awe and wonder filled the mind of 
Ang. He fell on his knees and prayed to the Fire 
Spirit : “ Spirit of light and heat, Thou hast come 
in our hour of need — I know not whence. Stay 
and keep away the terrible cold Spirit with thy 
red arrows. Stay! I will deny thee nothing. If 
Thou art hungry, I will feed thee.” 

As Ang watched the fire, it hungrily ate up the 
dry moss and lapped the dry sticks. He brought 
more and fed them to the reaching flames. The 
northern darkness had shut in the rest of the world, 
light lingered at the door of the cave of Ang, and 
the warm breath of the fire brought back the heat 
of summer in the midst of winter. Joy filled the 
heart of Ang, and he called to the mother and the 
5 


AROUND THE FIRE 

child : “ Oma, Om, come ! The Great One has 
heard. Come, come, come quickly.” 

The bark door opened, and the mother came out 
holding the child to her breast. A cry of wonder 
broke from her as she saw the fire, but wonder gave 
way to the mother instinct. The All-Father had 
heard. Here were warmth and light. The gray 
huntsman should not have her child. She crouched 
by the fire, holding the babe in her arms so that 
she sheltered it from the encircling cold while the 
glowing fire warmed and healed it. With grati- 
tude and awe she watched the color come back to 
the child’s face, and then she looked with eager 
questioning at the face of Ang, as it shone with 
a light brighter than that of the fire. 

Finally he spoke : “ I sat at the going in of the 
cave. Fear gripped me ; the cold smote me. I said, 
Odin has forgotten. It may be that he has gone 
to the south land because the cold was stronger 
than he. I heard the barking of the child. The 
dread of the great robber was on me. I tried to 
forget. I smote the flints together. Star flies 
seemed to leap from the stone, and fire was born 
in the heart of the moss.” 

Then Ang stood by the mother and the child 
and placed his left hand on the head of the mother 
and raised his right hand to the sky to which the 
leaping flames pointed and said: “Great Father, 
now I know that none is greater than Thou; not 
even the giants of the north. Thy shining arrows 
have driven the huntsman back. And I know that 
6 


THE FIRE SPIRIT 


Thine eyes see farther than the eagle floating in 
the sky, for thou hast seen us alone in the great 
woods, and Thine ear is quicker to hear than that 
of the mother listening for the cry of her first 
born, for thou hast heard the cry that did not rise 
to our lips. Henceforth the fire shall be the sign 
of Thee. As the flames leap up to the sky, so shall 
our thoughts leap to Thee, Our Father.” 

All through the long cold winter Ang and Oma 
fed the fire, and Om grew well and strong again. 
They very soon found that the fire, though it gave 
so freely the life-giving light and heat, had to be 
treated with great care. It was a good servant 
but a poor master. One day little Om toddled 
too close and burned his hand on a live coal. On 
another day the wind blew the sparks from the fire 
into the dry rushes which screened the entrance 
to the cave, and in a moment the cave was filled 
with flames and smoke, and Oma had to cover her 
head and that of Om with skins and dash out into 
the open. All the bedding of dry leaves was burned 
up, and some of the skins were badly scorched. The 
wooden handles of many of Ang’s spears and arrows 
and knives were burned also. It took many days 
of hard work to replace what the fire had eaten. 
So they came to fear as well as to love it. 

But Ang and Oma learned one thing from the 
fire which burned out their cave that was worth 
more than a thousand fires could destroy. Part of 
a deer which Ang had killed hung inside of the 
cave. It had been very hard to get, and it was 
7 


AROUND THE FIRE 


almost the first thing which Ang thought of after 
the fire had burned down. If that had been de- 
stroyed, they might starve before he could kill an- 
other one. He dashed into the cave to see if any- 
thing was left, the fear of hunger already gripping 
his vitals. A strange new odor filled his nostrils 
and doubled his hunger — the smell of roasted 
venison. The deer still hung from the side of the 
cave. The hair had been burned off and the skin 
hung in rolls, but the flesh was there, brown, hot, 
dripping red. 

At Ang’s call Oma hurried in. It needed but 
one whiff of the fragrant air to convince her that 
the touch of fire had made of the cold frozen meat 
food more delicious than the fruits of summer. 
She snatched a long stone knife from her belt and 
cut strips of venison steak from the smoking mass 
and gave to Ang and Om. 

After they had eaten, Ang looked into the glow- 
ing embers of the fire in front of the cave and 
pondered. The Fire Spirit had grown angry be- 
cause they had taken only one of the gifts of the 
Great Father and had burned out the cave, but 
it had showed them what its magic touch would do 
to the frozen meat. The wonder of it grew on him. 
As he looked into the world at the heart of the 
coals, he saw the promise of a better one than that 
in which he lived — a world in which the sons of 
his son’s sons should have discovered all the gifts 
of the Fire Spirit. 

As Ang looked into the fire, Oma looked into 

8 


THE FIRE SPIRIT 


the face of Ang and wondered at what she saw 
there. His look seemed to pierce the blackness 
behind the fire a hundred days’ journey. “ Father 
of my son, what seest thou in the fire? ” “ I see,” 

said Ang, “ the spirits of the things which are to 
be. I see, but do not understand all that I see. 
I see our son’s sons talking fire, the flames leaping 
from their mouths like tongues ; I see them cross- 
ing the big Water m great logs which breathe 
out fire and smoke. I see — but there are no 
words to tell thee all that I see.” 

And Oma looked into the embers, and she too 
saw the flickering spirits of the things to be. She 
saw countless fires — fires in the woods, fires in 
caves, fires on altars — but those who tended the 
fires were the daughters of her daughters. 

In a few days the damage done by the fire was 
repaired. It was Oma who discovered that water 
stopped the hunger of the fire, and when it grew 
too fierce she beat it back with boughs dipped in 
the stream which ran before their cave. 

The warmth of the fire and the cooked meat 
made little Om grow as no boy had ever grown 
in the cold season, and before the winter was over 
he was running about as sturdily as a young bear. 
But it made trouble for Oma. The woods were 
full of savage wild beasts, bears, panthers, and 
wolves. Even Ang, with his strength and cunning 
and great stone axe and sharp knives, was in con- 
stant danger. When he went out to hunt, Oma 
always feared till he came back. What chance then 
9 


AROUND THE FIRE 


would little Om have? So she tried to keep him 
always in the clearing before the cave, but the task 
grew harder and harder as the weather grew warmer 
and Om’s legs stronger and his eyes more curious. 

One evening, just as the dark was shutting in, 
Oma was cracking some bones to get some choice 
marrow for Ang’s supper after he returned from 
his hunting, and for a moment her back was turned 
to the boy. When she looked for him, he had 
slipped away into the darkness. The cry of a 
hyena broke on the stillness of the night, savage, 
blood-curdling. Then came a terrified scream from 
little Om. She leaped to her feet in terror. Where? 
Where? Which way? The sound seemed to come 
from all directions. Not knowing what she did, 
she snatched a burning brand from the fire and 
dashed into the darkness, leaving a trail of flame 
behind her. 

She had gone only a few yards when she came 
upon the beast crouching over little Om. Thought- 
less of all danger to herself, Oma leaped at the 
savage beast, whirling the burning brand about her 
head. The hyena gave a snarl of surprise and 
fear, dropped Om, and sprang away into the thicket, 
with leaps longer than any he had made in his 
life, for the fear of the fire was on him. 

Oma snatched her baby to her breast and hur- 
ried back to the cave, crooning over him as she 
went. She brought him to the fire and stripped off 
his little fur coat ; that was in shreds, but the 
child’s skin was only slightly scratched. 

io 


THE FIRE SPIRIT 


As she locked him in her arms to comfort him, 
Ang suddenly leaped out of the darkness, his great 
stone axe swinging in his hands. Terror was in 
his face ; sweat dropped from him like rain. “ The 
hyena! I heard his cry here and that of little Om! ” 

Oma pointed to the baby in her arms, to the torn 
skin at her feet, to the smoldering branch and 
to the darkness which had swallowed the great 
beast. “ It was only a moment, but he slipped 
away into the darkness ;* I heard the cry, the cry 
of the beast and the cry of the child. I caught 
up a brand from the fire and ran ; the fearless 
one ran at the sight of it. The child is safe, see! ” 
And Om smiled at his father through tear-dimmed 
eyes. 

Then Ang knelt by the side of the child and its 
mother and prayed : “ O Thou who art greater 
than the greatest and mightier than the mightiest, 
again Thou hast saved us by the red magic. By 
it Thou hast made us, Thy children, masters of the 
beasts of the wood, for the fear of the Red One is 
upon them all.” 

As the strength of the winter passed and the 
snow began to melt, Ang had a visit from Wang, 
who lived some days’ journey to the east. During 
the winter the men of the north saw little of each 
other. Each family needed a large hunting ground, 
and men had not learned to live together. The 
distances between the families were so great that 
when the snow was deep in the woods months passed 
in which the isolated families saw no human beings 


AROUND THE FIRE 


outside of their own circle. But when the ice broke 
up and the snow melted, the men who were on 
fairly friendly terms paid visits to each other and 
exchanged stories of the winter’s experiences. 

Now Wang approached the cave of Ang with 
great ceremony. It was neither good manners nor 
safe to approach another man’s home too suddenly. 
One could not be sure of a welcome, and it was 
always assumed that one who came suddenly was 
an enemy. So Wang strolled out on an open spot 
by the bank of the river which flowed by the cave 
of Ang, and acted as if he did not know that there 
was another human being within a day’s journey. 

' He tossed stones into the water and watched the 
ripples, apparently absorbed in meditation. Then 
he imitated the call of the wild fowl which swarmed 
the river banks. 

For a time Ang ignored him, going about as if 
he saw no one. But Oma and Om peered out 
curiously from the mouth of the cave. At last 
Ang wandered down to the river’s edge and looked 
aimlessly everywhere but where Wang stood. He 
too tossed many stones into the river. Finally, 
apparently satisfied that all the demands of primi- 
tive etiquette had been met, Ang turned to Wang 
and put his left hand over his heart and raised 
his right to the sky. Wang did the same ; they 
were of one blood and children of the Great Father. 
Both dropped their weapons where they stood and 
went to meet each other unarmed. Ang and Wang 
had played together as boys, hunted together as 
12 


THE FIRE SPIRIT 


young men and taken wives from the same family, 
but each spring, after the winter’s separation, they 
met with the same elaborate ceremony, because it 
was the man custom. 

When the men were seated, Oma and Om came 
out and sat near by. “ A long winter,” said Ang. 
“ A long winter,” answered Wang. “ Much cold,” 
said Ang. “ Much cold,” answered Wang. “ The 
woman and the boy? ’’ asked Wang. “ The woman 
is well, and the child grows like a bear’s cub,” 
replied Ang. 

Wang turned and looked at Oma and Om and 
gave a grunt of surprise. “ Why, they are as fat 
and sleek as if it was the time of fruits and nuts 
instead of the end of the great cold, when even 
the bear is so thin that he casts no shadow. Has 
the eagle carried thee to the south land on its 
wings? Have you found food that cold does not 
harden? Has Odin fed you? My woman sits all 
day at the going in of the cave. She looks old 
like the moss-bearded oak. She notices nothing, 
but talks ever about the little one whom the Black 
Robber took; she cares not for the child that is 
left, who cries for food like a young kid whose 
mother the wolves have eaten. And my strength 
has not come again. My traps and snares take 
nothing, and my arrow is slower than the flying 
deer.” 

At this Oma leaped to her feet and brought a 
piece of dried venison from the cave and a cake 
made from a flour of pounded nuts and seeds and 

13 


AROUND THE FIRE 


put them before the hungry man. He ate raven- 
ously, like a famished wolf, in silence, but ques- 
tioning with eager eye, “ How? Why? What?” 

And Ang answered the unspoken question : “ It 
was cold, so cold that the blood in one’s body ran 
slow and became like ice in the stream. The meat 
became like stone. The supply of nuts failed. 
The woman grew weak. The huntsman from the 
north took the child by the throat. His breath 
came hard. I said, ‘ He will be taken as the others 
have been taken, and the mother will not stay with- 
out the child, and I shall be alone,’ and I cried to 
the Great One, to Odin, the All-Father: ‘We are 
cold, give us heat; we are hungry, give us food.’ 
I heard no answer; there was no voice; but the 
prayer was heard. I sat by the going in of the cave, 
making knives of flint, not thinking to use them, 
but hoping to forget and cover up the hoarse cry- 
ing of the child with the noise of the flints. So 
I smote two stones together, and the chi£>s fell into 
the dry moss at my feet. There was a buzzing noise 
like that of a bee in a flower; a little white cloud 
rose from the moss, then spots of light like star- 
flies at night. Red tongues reached out and ate up 
the moss and the dry sticks. I saw that the Red 
One was hungry, and I gave him more moss and 
dry wood to eat. He grew big and bright, and his 
breath was warm like that of summer, and Oma 
brought out the child, and he drove away the bark- 
ing sickness from the child’s throat. Then we knew 
that Odin had heard us and sent him to save us.” 
14 


THE FIRE SPIRIT 


Arrd Ang told Wang how they had learned to 
cook the venison ; how they had learned to feed the 
Red One and keep him from wandering. He told 
how the fear of him was on all the beasts of the 
woods, so that not even the most savage and the 
most hungry dared stand before him ; and the small- 
est child was safe within the circle of light. 

Then they took the wondering Wang and showed 
him the sacred fire, gift of the Keeper of Secrets; 
they cooked venison over the coals so that he might 
taste it. And when Wang started for home Oma 
gave him a shoulder of smoked deer’s meat and 
cakes made of acorn meal and cooked on flat stones. 

And now a strange thing happened. Pity stirred 
the heart of Ang. Odin had helped him in the time 
of his troubles; why should he not help Wang? 
He turned to Oma. “ The hunting is good ; the 
stream is full of fish; the Red One can warm 
more than three. I will go and bring Wang and 
his woman and his child. They can live in the 
cave which we thought should be Om’s. It is 
the will of the All-Father that men should live 
together.” 

And the men went together and brought Wang’s 
wife and child, and they made a screen and a bark 
door for the new cave home. Oma taught Suta, 
wife of Wang, the mysteries of the fire, and Ang 
and Wang became the first neighbors, and that also 
was one of the gifts of the Revealer, through the 
Spirit of the Fire. 

As time went on, the story of Ang, the fire-man, 
15 


AROUND THE FIRE 


spread through all the north country, . and often 
men came as Wang had done, many days’ journey, 
through trackless forest, to see the wonderful fire 
in front of the cave of Ang. But Ang told to no 
one but Wang the secret of how to call the Fire 
Spirit. To men who were friendly he gave live 
coals to carry away in bowls hollowed out of soap- 
stone. Men who were the enemies of Ang did not 
dare come near his cave for fear of the red knives 
which guarded it. 

By and by men began to say to each other, as 
they went to hunt or sat about the carefully tended 
fire, that Ang, the fire-man, must be loved by Odin, 
and they came to Ang and said: “Tell us of the 
Great One,” and Ang was troubled because he had 
not heard his voice or seen him. As he hunted in 
the stillness of the forest, he pondered : “ Why had 
no one ever seen the Great Spirit ? Or was the 
sky his face and the sun and moon his eyes? Why 
had no one heard his voice? Or was the thunder 
his voice? If so, no one understood his language.” 
The more he thought, the more troubled he became. 
For days at a time he rarely spoke and went about 
as one in a dream, and Oma said to Wang and 
to others who came, “ The spell of Odin is on 
him,” and they began to look on Ang with awe 
and wonder and something of fear. 

One night as Ang was far from home and slept 
in a cave on a hill-side, he dreamed that his shadow 
self left his body and journeyed to a far country, 
and there he saw his father and his father’s father 
16 


THE FIRE SPIRIT 


and the men of long ago. They all sat about a 
great fire and beckoned to him to join their circle. 
Not a word was spoken. There was a silence like 
that before the storm breaks, and each one in the 
mystic circle looked steadfastly into the fire, which 
burned on and on, though no one fed its flames. 

As Ang continued to look into the flames, it 
seemed as if something was lifted from his eyes 
and he saw what no one had seen before. The 
earth was the body of Odin. His life was the 
life of all. He had not one voice like man, but 
many. He spoke in the thunder, in the voice of the 
storm, but also in the song of the birds and in the 
words of one’s best beloved. 

Ang awoke just as the sun was driving the mists 
from the valley beneath him, and these words came 
to his lips as if they were a message from the dream 
world which he had just left: “The wise son of 
the All-Father sees him everywhere and hears his 
voice always.” For the first time in his life Ang 
saw the beauty of the world at his feet, and the 
song of the birds which filled the vibrant air awoke 
a new joy of melody and harmony in his soul. 

As Oma and Om came out to meet him, he looked 
at them with newly opened eyes. How beautiful 
was the ruddy brown sheen of Oma’s hair and the 
light in her eyes as she welcomed him! And little 
Om’s eyes sparkled like dewdrops in the light of 
early morning, and his laughter was like the splash- 
ing of a brook over its pebbles! 

When Ang told Oma of his dream, she answered : 
17 


AROUND THE FIRE 


“ The men were right. The spell of the Keeper 
of Secrets was on thee. Thou art a man apart. 
Henceforth thou shalt tell men the will of the 
one who hides himself.” 

And so Ang became one of the voices of Odin. 
From far and near men in trouble and men in doubt 
came to him, and he spoke words of comfort and 
wisdom. And every year before the cold kept 
men apart they gathered at the home of Ang. They 
built a great stone altar, and each man threw a 
log upon the fire which Ang had kindled. And they 
brought the choicest from their hunting ahd had a 
great feast, but they always gave the best to Ang, 
and he put it in the fire, saying, “ The best we 
have is Thine and we are Thine.” And when they 
had feasted and were satisfied, Ang talked to them 
of the All-Father, and each year his words were 
wiser and more winning. 

Before the men departed each took a brand from 
the fire and marched about the altar chanting: 

Spirit red, Spirit red, 

Thine hunger has been fed. 

Spirit hot, Spirit hot, 

Forget us not, forget us not 

As the year grows old 
Keep us from the cold! 

In the darkness of the night 
Be our shining light, 

Spirit white, Spirit white! 


18 


THE FIRST POTTER 





L't \"\ 

III ; f '.I 








, II. THE FIRST POTTER 

A NG was a mighty hunter and also a priest of 
Odin, but Oma was a famous housewife or 
cave-wife, and not only Suta, the wife of Wang, 
came to take lessons of her, but many other women 
who had heard of her wonderful skill in cooking 
old food in new ways and discovering new foods 
which the magic of the fire made palatable. She 
had learned not merely how to cook the meat which 
Ang brought, but to dry it so that it would keep 
for a long time. She discovered how to make a 
coarse flour from nuts and acorns and to bake cakes 
on flat stones. At the fire feast the cooking of 
Oma made as great an impression as the wisdom 
and strength of Ang. 

But her greatest discovery was the art of making 
pottery dishes out of clay and baking them before 
the fire. For a long time women had made baskets 
of reeds and willow twigs in which they could carry 
dry foods, but the problem was to get something 
in which they could carry liquids. Sometimes they 
used skin bottles, but they soon leaked and the 
water rotted them out. Then some clever woman 
smeared the inside of a closely woven basket with 
resinous pitch. Another lined her baskets with clay 
21 


AROUND THE FIRE 


and baked them in the sun, but water would soon 
soften the clay. Then came Oma and the fire and 
the art of baking clay. This is the way it hap- 
pened. Oma had been lining some baskets with 
clay, and little Om tried to imitate her. Since it 
was cold he sat as near to the fire as he could* and 
after he had finished one he would put it on a 
stone near the fire until he had a row of them. 
Then the wind changed suddenly and blew the fire 
towards him, and he had to move quickly, leaving 
his clay baskets on the rock. He called to his 
mother to get them, but she had no notion of get- 
ting burned for so small a cause and she was too 
busy to bother, as mothers often are. 

That night after Om had gone to sleep she sat 
by the fire with Ang, and her eyes spied the little 
row of clay baskets. She picked one up to show 
the father what a clever boy his son was getting 
to be. As she touched the clay, she found it dry 
and hard as no clay she had ever touched before. 
Some of the baskets were dry and crumbly, but 
two or three in the center were hard as stone. 
A thought came to her. She ran to the brook and 
filled the hardest with water and brought them 
back to the fire. They did not soften or leak. 
Then she put them on a flat stone and pushed them 
almost into the fire. Soon the water in them began 
to bubble and steam. 

“ Look ! ” cried Oma. “ At the touch of the 
Red One a little Cloud Spirit goes up to the great 
Cloud Spirits that fly in the blue above us.” Then 
22 


• THE FIRST POTTER 


Ang knew that Odin had given a new gift. “ This 
time the Red One has spoken to you; what has 
he said?” 

Oma carefully drew the little clay pots from the 
fire, and after they had cooled she examined them. 
Two of them were cracked, but one was firm and 
solid as if it had been cut from stone. She held 
it up before Ang in triumph. “ This is what we 
have been waiting for since the beginning of time. 
The Red One has worked magic on the clay, and 
its old enemy, the water, cannot eat through it.” 

The next day Oma made baskets lined with clay 
and then, putting them on flat stones, pushed them 
into the heat of the fire. Some of them crumbled, 
but others baked hard and firm. As the heat burned 
off the inclosing basket, the pattern was left molded 
on the clay. 

After many experiments Oma learned just what 
clay to use and how to bake it. And she made 
pots of all sizes and arranged them on ledges of 
her cave and filled them with nuts and seeds. Then 
she learned how to use the clay pots for cooking. 
In the old days she placed scraps of meat and bone 
and roots in a pitch-lined basket and then added 
water and hot stones from the fire. Of course 
the pitch softened and gave an unpleasant taste to 
the stew, and often the hot water softened it so 
much that the basket became like a sieve. But now 
Oma could mix her stews and brews and boil them 
until they were soft and delicious and the clay dish 
was just as good as before. 

23 


AROUND THE FIRE . 


And Suta and other women came to look; and 
they wondered and tasted, and smacked their lips, 
and asked how it was done, then went home to do 
likewise. And the fame of Ang and Oma grew 
in the north land, and men said, “ They are loved 
by the Great One.” 

But if Oma made the first pottery and the most 
useful, Suta, wife of Wang, made the most beau- 
tiful. After she had learned to bake the clay so 
that neither fire nor water would touch it, she 
amused herself by making dishes of queer shapes. 
Then she discovered it was not necessary to make 
the basket molds, and that if she made marks on 
the clay they would be baked in. She began by 
making a little row of nail prints about the rim — 
((((((((((• Then she made rough pictures of 
animals and men with a sharpened stick. And the 
fame of Suta went out also through the north land, 
and they came from far away to see the wonderful 
things which she had done. Others tried, but no 
one could make such beautiful dishes as Suta. 

Before the great fire feast an idea came to Suta 
like a dream in the night, she knew not from where. 
She would make a great bowl for Odin and she 
would mold on it pictures of his gifts, so that all 
who saw would remember from whom the good 
things came. With great care she shaped a bowl 
as high as a five-year-old child and so large that 
a grown man could not circle it with his arms. On 
it she pictured the man who shot the first deer with 
a stone-tipped arrow, the man who made the first 
24 


THE FIRST POTTER 

snare for the wild birds, the man who first crossed 
the deep water in a hollowed log, Ang striking fire 
from the flints, Oma baking the clay dishes. Then 
she hesitated. These and many things more the 
Great One had given; what would He give next? 
What did she want most? 

Now Suta was not like Ang or Wang or even 
like Oma. Wang had thought sometimes that she 
was not so good a cook as Oma and that she spent 
too much time listening to the song of the birds 
and watching the play of the light on the water 
and the woods and the far-off hills. She did these 
things sometimes when he thought she ought to get 
wood for the fire or cook something for him, and 
he grumbled a little. But now that she made dishes 
of clay which no one else could make and all men 
said, “ What a fortunate man Wang is to have a 
woman that can make such things!” Wang began 
to be very proud of her. He even went so far as 
to get wood for the fire, which he did not think 
man’s work. 

And what did Suta the dreamer want? She did 
not want more food or more clothes or a bigger 
cave; she wanted the power to mold in clay the 
things she saw and loved and the things which she 
saw with her eyes closed. So she put on the great 
bowl for the All-Father a picture of a woman, with 
her back turned on the lookers and a sharpened 
stick in her hand, just ready to work the soft clay, 
but waiting for the power to draw on clay the 
picture in her mind. It was the first expression 
25 


AROUND THE FIRE 


of the unsatisfied yearning of the artist for beauty 
and the power to express it. For Suta was the 
mother of those who love the beautiful and long 
to give it permanent form. 

When the bowl for the Giver was finished, it 
was placed on a stone foundation in front of the 
stone altar, which Ang and Wang had made. At 
the feast it was filled with sparkling water from 
a spring near by, and as the men danced about the 
fire they dipped their hands in it as they passed 
by and sprinkled the water on the fire and on 
themselves and sang: 

Singing water of the brook, 

Shining laughter of the wood, 

Talking picture of the clay, 

Earth and fire and water, all 
Are voices of the Great. 

All who saw the great bowl which Suta had 
made were filled with wonder, and they wanted 
her to make something for them. Then the great 
idea came to Wang. Now Wang was not so 
strong as Ang or so good a hunter, but he wanted 
just as much to eat and just as warm furs to wear. 
He liked better to sit talking with some crony, in 
the shade in summer or by the fire in winter. 
Talking and sitting were the two things of which" 
he never tired. Now when the world was young 
such men went hungry and cold, and Wang had 
doge so often, and, more ’s the pity, Suta and little 
Sut ; but then came the idea. Every one wanted 
Suta’s clay dishes ; he wanted deer’s meat and bear’s, 
26 


THE FIRST POTTER 


and furs, and the choicest seeds and nuts. He would 
barter the things which Suta made for the things 
he wanted. Suta would do the work ; others would 
bring food and furs and fruits; he would sit in 
front of the cave and give as little of the first 
for as much of the second as possible. And the 
idea worked. Suta loved to mold the plastic clay 
and decorate it. Many wanted the things which she 
had made, and Wang’s wily tongue multiplied the 
number of those who were willing to pay for what 
they wanted. 

So Wang became the father of a long line of 
traders, and the Wang family had more food than 
they could eat and more furs than they could wear, 
and Wang grew thick in the belly and thin in the 
calf, but it suited him, and Suta was too busy 
with her clay to care. At least she said nothing. 
And Wang the trader became almost as great a 
man as Ang the priest. 

And Oma, wife of Ang, grew envious of Suta, 
wife of Wang. And she grumbled to Ang: “ Did 
not you find the Red One and bring Wang and 
Suta so that they should not perish from the cold? 
Have you not fed them with meat of your own 
hunting? Did not I learn from the Red One how 
to harden and mold the clay? Did I not show 
Suta? Do I not work harder than she? Am I not 
a better cook? Can I not make better coats of 
fur? But see, little Sut has finer furs than Om 
and is fatter. And all who come now pass by our 
cave, except at the great feasts, or when they are 
27 


AROUND THE FIRE 


sick and in trouble, and go to talk with Wang and 
look at Suta. Is she so much better to look at 
than Oma? ” 

But Ang comforted her with wisdom that had 
come from long broodings under the shadow of the 
Keeper of Secrets. “ The Giver has differing gifts. 
To the fire he gives one, to the water another, to 
the earth another. To Suta he gave the love of 
beauty; to you he gave the love of doing and 
making; and the joy of doing is greater than the 
joy of having. To each her gifts as the Great One 
wills. And I would rather be the man of Oma 
than of Suta.” So Oma was comforted, though she 
often sighed wistfully as she saw men and women 
go by to the cave of Wang or watched Suta deftly 
mold some new thought into the yielding clay. 


28 


THE FIRST GANG 





III. THE FIRST GANG 


HE years went by, and Om and Sut were 



1 almost men. They had trapped the smaller 
animals, now and then shooting a deer with their 
arrows or driving one into a pitfall. But now they 
aspired to bigger game. They wanted to sit with 
the men about the campfire, to be treated by the 
women, and especially by the girls of their own age, 
as if they were grown up. And there was just one 
way to demonstrate to the satisfaction of all that 
they had arrived at man’s estate, and that was to 
prove themselves hunters strong enough and cunning 
enough to match their wits and weapons against 
the strength and fury of the bear and the wild 
. buffalo. 

They spent long days in the woods together plan- 
ning and contriving. They provided themselves 
with bows of the strongest and arrows of the sharp- 
est, with saw-edged knives, lances, and stone axes. 
For hours they shot at a mark, taking turns and 
criticizing each other’s shooting and handling of 
the bow. Sometimes the men found them and 
smiled at them indulgently. But the women and 
girls laughed and jibed at the boys and pretended 
to be very much alarmed at the idea of two smooth- 


AROUND THE FIRE 


faced boys going hunting alone in the woods. That 
made the boys work all the harder and keep more 
and more by themselves. 

Now in a valley, some distance away, there was 
a herd of wild buffalo, the most dreaded of all the 
wild beasts. The bear was ugly only when hungry 
or wounded. The leopards rarely attacked men in 
the daylight and in the open. Even the wolves 
did not like to fight men unless they could take 
them at a disadvantage. But the buffalo bulls 
seemed to have in their breasts the concentrated fury 
of all the savage creatures of the wild. They feared 
nothing. Their thick hide and powerful muscles 
defended their vital parts from the arrows and spears 
of men. They would charge at sight, and when 
their keen eyes did not detect their enemies their 
sensitive nostrils did. The only possibility of escape 
was to climb the nearest tree, and sometimes the 
mad bull would lie in wait at the foot of the 
tree till the man dropped from cold or exhaustion. 
Many men had been already killed. Even the 
boldest and the hardiest rarely ventured near the 
buffalo valley. The boys were warned from' it as 
from sure death. 

For that reason, perhaps, it had a peculiar fasci- 
nation for Om and Sut. They talked about it and 
dreamed about it. They climbed hills from which 
they could look down into it. They never forgot 
the time when they first saw the herd in the dis- 
tance, the bulls feeding on the outside, the cows 
and calves on the inside. Now and then some young 
32 


THE FIRST GANG 

bull would get too bold and rouse the anger of 
one of the kings of the herd and there would be 
a terrible battle. When the dust hid the fighters 
from the boys’ sight, they could hear the terrible 
bellowings. 

As time went on, buffalo valley had a greater 
and greater attraction for the boys. They ventured 
nearer and nearer. They lay on the bluffs over- 
looking the valley and boasted to each other how 
they would kill a bullock and carry it back to their 
cave homes ; and they imagined how envious the men 
and boys who had been afraid would be and how 
humble the girls. 

But one day they ventured a little too near, and 
a stray bullock caught sight of the boys and im- 
mediately charged. Each boy climbed a tree with 
a swiftness which did credit to his bringing up, and 
there they stayed hour after hour during the long 
day, the bull watching them from blood-red eyes. 
Now and then he would stroll away to browse and 
drink, but at the slightest movement would dash 
back to the foot of the trees where the boys roosted. 
As night came on, the boys grew colder and colder 
and hungrier and hungrier. They remembered 
the men who had gone into the buffalo valley and 
never come back, and they wished they were at 
home, even though the girls did laugh at them and 
they had to sit back of the men at the fire. 

Finally they escaped, but by good fortune, not 
by any prowess of their own. A great bear came 
out of the wood, looking for something to fill his 
33 


AROUND THE FIRE 


empty stomach. He had missed a deer as it came 
to drink. He was tired of roots and ants’ nests. 
He wanted meat — good red meat and plenty of 
it. When he saw the bullock, he hesitated for a 
moment, for big as he was he usually passed bulls 
by. A fight with one was such uncertain business, 
and even if he killed the bull the appetite was 
likely to be killed too. But the bear was very 
big and the bullock not very large and he was out 
of sorts and he hesitated too long. The bull spied 
him and charged instantly. The bear stood on his 
hind feet like a great boxer. As the bull struck 
him, he gave him a blow with his great paw which 
would have broken the neck of any other animal 
and buried his great fangs in his shoulder. But the 
bull’s sharp horns pierced the chest of the bear and 
bore him back to the ground. Deeper and deeper 
the cruel horns reached, while the claws of the 
bear tore great strips from the bull’s flanks. It was 
a terrible spectacle, but the boys were too near to 
enjoy it. Quick as a flash they slid down and ran 
up the cliffs above them like two monkeys. At 
the top they stopped, panting for breath, and looked 
down into the valley. The air was filled with 
terrible roarings and bellowings. In the dim light 
they could see a huge brown mass rolling back and 
forth below them. Now they thought the bear had 
won and now the bull. 

By and by the dark settled down, and nothing 
could be seen ; the sounds grew fainter and finally 
all was still. The boys did not dare to go through 
34 


THE FIRST GANG 


the woods in the dark, so they found a bed of 
leaves and lay down where they were. But there 
was not much sleeping that night. A leopard’s 
shrill cry woke them from their first doze; the bay- 
ing of wolves from the next ; and when a great owl 
gave his weird wail just above their heads, they 
gave it up. 

The crackling of twigs told them that they were 
being hunted by some night prowler. In the dark 
and with no weapons — for they had dropped every- 
thing but their knives — they were at the mercy 
of any wild beast which discovered their hiding 
place. Then Om remembered the fire which had 
saved his life when a child, the fire which no animal 
was bold enough to come near. Could he make a 
fire? The moss upon which they lay was dry. A 
rough flake of flint which had not been shaped was 
in his skin pouch and his flint knife was in his 
belt. He had seen his father call the Red Spirit 
from the moss by striking flints together. Once or 
twice he had succeeded in doing it himself, but it 
was no easy task. Still, there was nothing for it 
but to try. With trembling hands he gathered the 
driest of the moss into a little pile and pulled to- 
gether some dry twigs. Sut got on his knees ready 
to blow the smallest spark into flame. Om took 
the flint flake in his left hand and struck it a glanc- 
ing blow with his knife. A dull spark flew, but did 
not light the moss. Again and again he tried, but 
in vain. Meanwhile soft but ominously heavy foot- 
falls came nearer and nearer. It was now or never. 
35 


AROUND THE FIRE 


In desperation he struck a terrific blow which shat- 
tered the knife in his hand and brought the blood 
to his battered hand. He saw nothing, but Sut 
suddenly stooped lower and blew gently and then 
more strongly. A tiny glow appeared, a wisp of 
smoke, and then a red flame. Om crouched by the 
fire, exhausted, speechless, and helpless; but Sut 
skillfully fed the growing flames till they leaped 
high, and the hunter in the dark leaped away with 
great bounds into the deep woods. 

All night the boys sat by the fire, hungry and 
exhausted, but happy and safe. In the morning 
they looked down on the open spot below them 
which had been the scene of the terrible fight of 
the night before; and there, still locked together 
by horn and claw and jaw, were the bear and the 
bull, both defeated or both victorious. A fox came 
out of the bush and sniffed at the pool of blood in 
which they lay; a flock of red-eyed buzzards hov- 
ered in the air above and finally lit on a dead tree 
near by. 

The boys were looking with mingled awe and 
delight at the bodies of their savage foes of the 
day before, when a brilliant thought came to Sut. 
“Om! The horns and claws! We will take them 
to the camp, and who will laugh at us then ! ” No 
sooner thought than done. Down the cliff they 
clambered, forgetful of everything but the coveted 
trophies. At the foot they found their weapons 
where they had dropped them. The fox skulked 
away, the buzzards screamed and flapped to a little 
36 


THE FIRST GANG 


more distant tree, while the boys hacked off with 
rude knife and stone bludgeon one of the bear’s 
claws and the horns of the bull. Then they 
fled up the cliff again and started hot foot for 
home. 

As they approached the stream by which they 
lived, Sut began to hasten, but Om went slower 
and slower. “ Hurry, you snail,” said Sut, “ the 
women and girls will be pounding the meal and 
making ready for the men to eat and they will see 
by these that we are not boys to be laughed at.” 
“But,” said Om, “we did not kill them; we ran 
away.” “ Oh ! but we don’t need to tell all that,” 
said Sut; “ hurry up, hurry up! ” But Om would 
not hurry. He went more and more slowly and 
finally sat down to think it out. The temptation 
was a very strong one. Perhaps all they would 
need to do would be to be silent, and it would 
be very pleasant to be treated like mighty hunters 
and men. But the trouble was that deep down 
in their hearts they would know that they had not 
proved it. 

Then a thought came to Om which settled his 
uncertainty. If it had not been for Odin who 
sent the bear to fight the bull, and sent the Red 
One at the prayer of the flints to drive away the 
leopard, they would not be here and there would 
be no story to tell. Then he remembered that his 
father had said that the Great One loved truth as 
he loved light. He turned to Sut with all his inde- 
cision gone. “We will tell the truth! We will 
37 


AROUND THE FIRE 

not win the man-right by telling a lie.” Sut grum- 
bled a little, but yielded as he always did to the 
stronger will of Om. 

When the boys came to the river bank, there was 
a great shout, and all went out to meet them, for the 
villagers had grown anxious at their long absence. 
And they were pleased that no one laughed at them, 
not even the girls. As the boys were being fed, they 
told the story of their adventures amid the eager 
questionings of the home group. The horns of the 
bull and the paws of the bear were passed about, 
and the older men told how large the bear must 
have been from the size of the paw. Then they 
told stories of bears which they had seen and fights 
of many kinds in the forest till Om and Sut were 
all but forgotten. But Om was pleased to notice 
that his father looked at him with quiet approval 
in his eyes, and he heard him say to Oma: “Our 
son will be a great hunter, for his feet are swift 
and his hands are strong, and his head is chief over 
them all, and more than that, he is beloved by the 
Great One.” And Om was glad. 

For a while the boys brooded over their adventure 
and kept away from the buffalo valley. But the 
horns and the great claws kept reminding them, 
and again all their hunting trips seemed to lead 
towards the dangerous valley. Oma had tried to 
make Om promise that he would not go there 
again, but Ang had said : “ Do not make him prom- 
ise. He must prove his man-right as we all have 
done, and the Great One loves him.” 

38 


THE FIRST GANG 

Finally Om said to Sut : “ We cannot escape the 
call of the death valley. Something tells me that 
we will either leave our bones there or win our man- 
right. I have been thinking it over, and it seems 
to me that one of the reasons why so many men 
have lost their lives there is that they have not used 
their brains and they have not worked together. 
Why should n’t we be the first to do it? My idea is 
this. We will get together ten boys of our own 
age and we will have only those who will promise 
under the sacred oak tree to hunt together and 
not each for himself. Then we will choose one 
who shall be to the others as the head is to the 
hands and feet. All shall obey him. When we 
have learned to work together, we will go where 
the cliffs which overlook the buffalo valley draw 
together, and we will pile great stones where a 
push will send them crashing down. Then we will 
keep watch, and some time when the wind blows 
up the valley and the herd is well up to where the 
cliffs are too steep to climb, where they come 
together like two streams, we will pray to the Fire 
Spirit and take burning brands from the fire and 
light the tall dead grass at the opening of the val- 
ley. Six will start from one side and six from the 
other, and we must outrun the deer. The buffalo 
will run from the wall of fire farther and farther 
up into the narrow part of the valley, and when 
they are bunched together like fish in a trap we will 
hurl down great stones and shoot our arrows, and 
there will be meat enough for all the men of the 
39 


AROUND THE FIRE 


north country, and every cave shall have its buffalo 
skin at the going in.” 

So Om and Sut got the other boys together with 
great secrecy, and every one was made to take the 
oath of loyalty to the gang under the sacred oak. 
And Sut was chosen Chief, because he was the best 
talker. Om could make the plans and carry them 
out, but Sut could explain them to others so that 
they would understand and want to carry them out. 
In the working of the thing Sut did most of the 
talking, but he always kept his eye on Om and did 
what Om wanted, and when it came to doing things 
Om was leader. 

For weeks the clan scouted the valley, often 
having hairbreadth escapes when they ventured too 
near. It seemed as if the wind would never be 
in the right direction when the herd was at the 
small end of the runway. But the delay was a 
good thing. The boys learned to hang together and 
obey the commands of their chief. One boy nearly 
lost his life by disobeying, but the lesson was 
learned, and the gang hung together as no boys 
had ever done since the man-story began. 

At last the day came when the look-out reported 
the herd well up in the narrow end of the valley 
and the wind blowing up. Nothing was said, but 
by common consent Om was leader for the day. 
He sent Sut and five other boys to the south, while 
he and five more went to the north. Each gang 
was to build a fire where the smoke would not blow 
up the valley, and dry torch sticks were made ready 
40 


THE FIRST GANG 


to light. At midday, when a spear driven into the 
ground cast no shadow, Om shot an arrow high 
into the air. Each boy seized a torch from the fire 
and dashed across the mouth of the valley, lighting 
the dry grass as he ran. 

It was a wild rush. Never had the boys run 
as they ran that day. In the years after, they 
told the tale to their children and grandchildren 
and they set the pace faster with each telling. In 
less time than it takes to tell, the boys had spread 
their net of fire and the wind was drawing it for 
them. 

When the boys reached the cliffs, the frightened 
herd was already crowding up into the narrow end 
of the wedge-shaped valley, fleeing in terror from 
the pursuing wall of fire. Then the boys rolled 
the great stones 'down upon the seething mass below 
them; shooting their arrows till the supply was 
exhausted. The maddened buffaloes trampled on 
and gored each other until scarcely more than half 
the herd escaped alive. 

The young hunters, exhausted but triumphant, 
danced along the ledges, filling the air with savage 
yells. 

The next thing was to send word to the scattered 
homes. Three boys were left to keep watch, and 
the rest ran as if running a race to carry the 
news of the feast that was waiting for all who 
would come. 

Before night every man, woman, and child within 
a distance of twenty miles was on the spot. Old 
4i 


AROUND THE FIRE 


suspicions were forgotten and old grudges ignored, 
for the time being, at least. A great fire was built, 
and the men stripped the hides from the dead 
buffaloes and the women rolled them up to carry 
away for tanning. One of the largest of the bulls 
was dragged to the fire and roasted whole. Far into 
the night they worked and feasted. Finally, as they 
stretched themselves about the fire, exhausted but 
satisfied, Ang spoke: 

“ I have seen the Cold Spirits come and go many 
times, but I have never seen so many men together 
as now. Men have not been like the wolves who 
hunt in packs or like the buffaloes which feed in 
droves or like the ducks and geese which come 
and go in flocks. Each man, with his mate, has 
lived apart like the bear or the lion. There have 
been fear and hatred between us because each man 
feared that some other man would spoil his hunt 
or rob his traps. And we have lived far apart. 
To-night we sit about the same fire as some of 
us have sat before at the feasts of the Great One. 
As I look into the fire, into the cave of the Red 
One within it, I see that whenever men come to- 
gether to hunt, to feast, and there is no hatred in 
their hearts, it is a feast of Odin. I have told you 
many times before of the will of him whose voice 
I am as I watch the tongues of flame. It is his 
will that men learn to live together. These boys 
have heard the whisper in the heart which we have 
not heard. They have killed more buffaloes since 
the sun rose this morning than we have done in all 
42 


THE FIRST GANG 

our lives and our fathers before us. They have 
not come to their full strength; they have not 
learned to shoot as far or as straight as we have 
done, but together they have done what no one of 
us could do.” 

Then Ang picked some long grasses from a tuft 
beside him and took out a single one. Holding it 
where all could see, he snapped it as if it were a 
spiders web; then he put two together and snapped 
them ; afterward more and more until he had twisted 
a rope of grass which the strongest man could not 
break. He passed it about the circle, and each 
tried in vain to break it. Then Ang took it and 
held it high above his head where all could see, 
the women and boys t as well as the men. “The 
single grass which the child can break is man 
alone; this rope of twisted grass is man united.” 

A shout of assent broke from the group: “It is 
the will of the Great Spirit.” Then Wang, who 
had been restless in his place, leaped to his feet: 
“ we are to hunt together like the wolf, we must 
learn from him. Each pack has its head which all 
the others obey. When the geese fly to the south, 
a great bird who is wise always leads the flock. Let 
us learn from the beasts and the birds. Who shall 
be our chief ? ” 

They all looked at Ang, and some one said, 

“ Let Ang be our chief.” But Ang shook his head: 

“ I have told you for many years the will of Odin. 

I will do so still as I see it in the fire or hear it 
in the whisper to the heart, but my eyes do not 
43 


AROUND THE FIRE 


see as they did, my feet are not so swift in the 
chase, or my hands so strong at the kill. The head 
of the wolf pack is the strongest and the most cun- 
ning, not the oldest. The whisper within tells me 
that it is not time to choose a chief to-night. He 
must be proven first.” 

The men looked about on each other and knew 
that the words of Ang were wise. There was no 
one that they could all follow without question. 
The time to choose had not come yet. It came 
when — But that is a tale for another telling. 

Then Om and Sut and the boys who had fol- 
lowed them were brought into the men’s circle 
by the fire, and they told the story of how they 
had trapped the buffalo. It was Sut who told the 
story, and his eyes shone like stars and his voice 
bubbled like the brook. As he talked on, Wang 
would wag his head now and then, as much as to 
say: “See! like father, like son.” The girls lis- 
tened eagerly to Sut, but the older ones looked at 
Om, who sat a little back where the light did not 
shine so brightly on his face, and nodded their 
heads and said to each other, “ Some day, perhaps, 
if the Great One wills.” 

From that time on men began to do things 
together as they had never done before. They 
hunted together and fished together. Groups of 
related and friendly families lived near, in favored 
spots, as Ang and Wang had done. And they had 
more to eat and more to wear. Fewer lost their 
lives in hunting the more dangerous animals. The 
44 


THE FIRST GANG 


women and children were safer in the little vil- 
lages than they had beeti in their lonely caves and 
huts. 

And Om and Sut were remembered in the sagas 
of the tribe as those who taught men how to live 
together. 


45 






















THE FIRST CHIEF 









* 













IV. THE FIRST CHIEF 



HE years went by^, and Om and Sut and their 


X fellows became men. Their muscles hardened 
and the beard came upon their faces, and when 
they spoke at the council fire older men listened. 
They had grown more strong and more cunning. 
They had learned to hunt together so well that 
no one was hungry or without warm skins for his 
back and his bed. Some of them had taken mates 
from the girls who had ceased to laugh at them 
after the great slaughter at Death Valley. But 
Om and Sut seemed to be enough for each other. 
Day and night they were always together. 

Oma grew anxious and said : “ The years go by and 
you take no mate. It is not the man custom. There 
are many girls. I will choose one.” But Om shook 
his head. “ When Freya shows me one like Oma, 
but not before.” And the mother could say no more. 

One year, as the cold grew stronger, disturbing 
rumors came to the village of Angwang. Some 
young hunters who had gone far to the east had 
seen fires at night a long way off. The next night 
the fires had been nearer. Then Ang remembered 
that his father had told him that many days’ jour- 
ney to the sun-rising there were other men not like 


49 


AROUND THE FIRE 

themselves. Their hair was black, coarse, and 
straight, their cheek bones high and wide, and they 
hunted men as well as beasts. They killed the 
men and the children and took away the women. 
They came like the great tempest and left none 
behind to tell whence they came or whither they 
had gone. By a common instinct all the scattered 
families and groups gathered at Angwang. Men 
feared to go far to hunt. The terror of the dreaded 
foes grew greater, and food began to grow more 
scarce. Ang called the men together to take coun- 
sel. They did not dare build a fire, for fear it 
should be seen. 

“ The time has come,” said Ang, “ for the men 
to have a chief. Who shall he be ? ” “ Let the one 
who can save us from the red men be our chief,” 
cried some one. Many talked, and many at the 
same time, but no one seemed to know what 
to do, and the fear grew. At last Om, who had 
been silent, stood up, and all listened. “ I have been 
silent because I am not so wise as many of you. 
I speak now, not because I am wiser than the old 
men, but because I am freer. I have no women or 
children in my cave to starve or be fed by others 
if I am killed. I and some who are like me will 
go and see who these men are whose terror has 
fallen upon us till we shake like the rushes by the 
river bank when the wind blows upon them. Who 
will go with me ? ” 

Sut and Lack rose and joined Om, and together 
they slipped aw'ay in the darkness. They stopped 
50 


OM, THE CHIEF 


under the sacred oak to make their plans. They 
would travel by night and watch from hill tops 
and high trees by day and learn what these men 
from the east were like and what they wanted. 

They provided themselves with three days’ food 
and their finest weapons. Under the leadership of 
Om they journeyed all night and part of the next 
day toward the east, but saw nothing. After a 
few hours’ rest they kept on through most of the 
second night. On the morning of the second day 
they reached the top of the Black Hills, and from 
the highest peaks they could see still another day’s 
journey to the east. At first nothing could be 
seen but the wide expanse of forest, threaded here 
and there by streams, with occasional meadows by 
the river banks. 

As the mist gradually lifted, they studied with 
care each meadow opening. The dim haze of morn- 
ing gave way to the full blaze of day, and still their 
searching eyes found nothing to arouse suspicion. 

But finally Om, whose eyes were the keenest of 
the three, saw on the edge of one of the farthest 
meadows what appeared to be a herd of buffaloes or 
possibly wild horses. After examining them as care- 
fully as possible, he noticed that they did not seem 
to move about as a group of wild animals would do 
if feeding. Then he thought he saw smaller objects 
moving in and among the herd. What could they 
be? If they were men, surely the buffaloes or 
wild horses would not let them move about among 
them in that way. 


5i 


AROUND THE FIRE 


At last the moving in and out stopped and the 
herd began to advance, going in single file like 
wolves. More strange still, on the back of each 
animal there seemed to be a moving hump. The 
three young men looked at each other with ques- 
tioning and dread. What could these strange ani- 
mals be? “ If they were only men, I would not 
mind,” said Sut. “ Let us go back and consult 
with the wise ones,” said Lack, whom the fear of 
the unknown was gripping. But Om shook his 
head : “ It is for us to find out and not for the 
wise ones at the village. I will go forward and 
find out what these strange animals are. If I do 
not return by the next sunrise, Lack will go back 
to the village. If I do not return by nightfall of 
the same day, Sut will return also, and may Odin 
help you.” 

They tried in vain to persuade Om to go back 
with them or at least to wait until they could see 
more from their lookout. “ If I wait,” said Om, 
“ it may be too late to warn the villagers — if it 
is the red men in disguise.” So he took his share 
of the food, and having fixed the directions in his 
mind by studying the sun, the slant of the shadows, 
and the direction of the wind, he slipped down the 
hill-side and vanished into the forest. Sut and Lack 
watched him anxiously. Their fears grew, after 
Om had left, and if it had not been for their 
love for Om and their dread of what would be 
said if they returned alone, they would have fled 
from the mystery they dreaded. It was Sut who 
52 


OM, THE CHIEF 


finally said, “ If Om can go on, we can at least stay 
the appointed time.” So they settled down to that 
hardest of all tasks, waiting, when the fever of 
unrest is in the blood and the legs twitch to be 
going. 

Meanwhile Om was making his way through 
the trackless forest with the skill of one born in 
the wild. In the excitement of rapid motion his 
fears left him. He picked his way by the slant of 
the light, by the moss on the trees. Sometimes he 
climbed a tree to test the wind and see if he could 
catch some guiding object. His plan was to strike 
the river on whose banks the meadow lay and then 
follow it. If the strange animals or men were 
coming east, they would follow t the stream. At the 
very thought of them a chill of fear crept up to 
the roots of his hair. Hour after hour passed. 
He took a little of the food which he carried and 
drank often at the numerous brooks. A leopard 
in the tree top glared at him and was about to 
spring, but Om was gone before it made up its 
mind. Then a big bear sniffed at his track and 
the leopard decided that it had other business. Now 
and then a pair of timber wolves would follow his 
trail for a short distance, but they were full-fed and 
they did not altogether like the strange man-smell. 

It was not until almost nightfall that Om reached 
the banks of the river. Exhausted with the day’s 
journey and the excitement, he decided to find a 
sheltered place where he could see and not be seen, 
and wait. If the dreaded ones were coming this 
53 


AROUND THE FIRE 


way, he would gain nothing by going to meet them. 
So he found a bluff which overlooked a small 
meadow by the river bank and lay down to rest 
and watch. Overcome by fatigue, he fell asleep, 
but was awakened by strange noises, just as the sun- 
light was leaving the tree tops. Some heavy animals 
were crashing through the woods and drawing near 
the meadow. There were 'hoarse cries — men’s 
voices, but unlike any that he had ever heard. He 
peered out through his screen of ferns and looked 
in fear and dread at the fringe of the forest from 
whence the strange noises came. 

The crashing and shouting grew louder and 
louder, the boughs parted, and there came out upon 
the open a man — a red man with black hair. 
Om shuddered at the size of him and his savage 
look. Behind him, led by a rope of twisted grasses, 
was a horse, such as Om had sometimes seen on 
distant plains, wilder even than the deer; but this 
horse followed the man as a child follows its mother. 
Behind the first man came another, and another, 
each leading a horse. On the backs of some of 
the horses were lashed skins and strange dishes 
and weapons. Man followed man until it seemed 
as if the whole meadow was filled with the most 
savage-looking group Om had ever seen. Even 
the men whom he had beheld in his troubled 
dreams as a child had not been so terrible. Last 
of all there came out of the wood a horse which 
was also led, and on its back was — Om rubbed his 
eyes and looked again — a woman, though she was 
54 


OM, THE CHIEF 


not a red woman. It was too dark to see clearly, 
but her hair was not straight like that of the red 
men, but waved like the water when the wind 
blows upon it gently. 

The horse on which the woman rode was led to 
the very center of the meadow, and as the woman 
was taken down Om could see that her hands were 
tied behind her with thongs. Some of the men 
made a rough bed of skins and placed the woman 
upon it. Then they untied her hands and tied 
her feet together instead. Om wondered why they 
needed to take such pains to keep one woman 
amongst so many men. Then they brought food 
and made a rough screen of skins about her. 

The men tied their horses , where they could 
feed on the grass of the meadow and ate from 
something which they carried in skin bags on the 
backs of their horses, and then they lay down to 
sleep on piles of leaves. 

At last all was still and dark, and Om lay 
and thought and thought. These were the red 
men who hunted for men. They came from far 
because the four feet of their horses could carry 
them and their burdens. But they must have come 
from a country where there were many meadows 
and not so many trees. Here a man could travel 
faster than any animal with four feet except the 
wolf. Why should these men of the plains tear 
their way through the woods? And the woman 
with the hair like Oma’s, with hands tied? What 
did it all mean? Om could not read the riddle, 
55 


AROUND THE FIRE 


but some things were plain. The red men were 
going straight to the village of his people. In 
three days, or four at the most, they would be there, 
and what could his people do against these men? 
They must be stopped before they came to the vil- 
lage. With the horses there was only one way 
that they could . get through the hills, and that 
was by a narrow pass through which ran one of 
the brooks to feed the stream by which they were 
camped. The red men must be stopped there. But 
how could it be done? The pass was a day’s jour- 
ney; the village three hard days. He could not 
stop them alone. 

As he lay and thought, a desperate plan came to 
him. The horses were tethered together at one 
end of the meadow. He remembered that the 
ground was soft and the stakes were not driven in 
very deeply. If he could frighten the horses, they 
might bolt and pull their tether stakes and be 
lost in the woods. That might delay the red men 
till he could send word to the village and get help. 

Om crept down from his hiding place and crawled 
like a fox towards the horses. Every now and then 
his ears caught the stealthy sounds of other creepers, 
and he wondered whether he might not feel their 
fangs in his neck before he had accomplished his 
purpose. Sometimes he saw yellow eyes in the 
dark, but the Great One must have been with 
him, for nothing harmed him. At last he got near 
the horses, who were snorting uneasily, afraid of 
the things they had heard and smelled in the dark 
56 


OM, THE CHIEF 

about them. Waiting till all was quiet, Om dashed 
at the horses, with blood-curdling yells, which 
seemed to combine all the most dreaded noises of 
the wood, the shriek of the hyena, and the cry of 
the gray wolf as he leaps upon his prey. 

In an instant all was confusion. The horses, 
with wild snorts of terror, bolted. The shouts of 
the men only added to their fear, and they dashed 
into the woods. Om did not wait to hear what 
the red men would do. Sight was impossible, as 
the night was moonless and there was no fire. As 
fast as possible he groped his way along the river’s 
bank, now falling over roots and tangled vines, and 
now splashing through the haunts of the deadly 
watersnakes. He had no time to think of any 
other enemies than the red men. It might be that 
the hidden enemies of the wood and water would 
forget their hatred of man for to-night. At any 
rate he must get on, get on! 

The night was like a black dream, long drawn 
out. Sometimes Om wondered dully if he had not 
dreamed it all. But as the morning light began 
to filter into the darkness of the wood, Om’s brain 
cleared and he went faster and faster. If the full 
strength of man when men were young had not 
been his, he would have fallen by the way. 

When it was light enough to see, he climbed a 
tree and looked off. The stream had led him right. 
The hills loomed above him. He was almost at 
the pass through which the red men must go if they 
went west. 


57 


AROUND THE FIRE 

As he came into the narrow gorge, he noted with 
satisfaction how the rocks rose up straight on either 
side. The men would have to go in wolf-file. Then 
his people on the rocks above would hurl down 
great stones and crush them as the bullocks had 
been crushed in Death Valley. 

Before the sun had climbed so high that the 
tree trunks cast no shadow, Om reached the spot 
where Sut and Lack were anxiously waiting. Lack 
was sent hot foot to the village to bring the men 
to guard the pass, while the others remained to 
watch. 

While Om had been gone, Sut had set some 
snares for the wild hares which were very numer- 
ous, so that the young men had food for several 
days and could give their undivided attention to 
the pass. Om went to the eastern entrance and 
Sut to the other end, and they rolled all the loose 
stones which they could find to the edge of the cliffs 
so that they could be pushed down on the red men. 

It was strenuous and exhausting labor, and 
anxious fears made it even harder. Notwith- 
standing the fierce labor of pushing the great stones 
into position, the hours seemed to drag with snails’ 
feet. Every moment they expected to hear the din 
of the coming of the red men, but night came at 
last and there was no sign of them. By morning 
the villagers would be there, if Lack had been swift 
and the men courageous. Om was so exhausted by 
the sleepless night and the terrific labors of the 
day that he fell asleep as soon as the shadows began 
58 


OM, THE CHIEF 


to fall. Sut found him lying on a moss-covered 
rock and thought him dead at first. Remembering 
how long he had been without sleep and how much 
he would need strength on the morrow, Sut let him 
sleep and kept his lonely watch. As for himself, 
sleep was out of the question. Every nerve was 
tense and every sense alert. The crackling of a 
dry twig warned him of the stealthy movement of 
some wild animal, but he dared not light a fire. 
He leaped to his feet and grasped his stone axe 
at the sudden hoot of an owl. 

As the darkest of the night passed and gave way 
to the dull gray of morning, Sut also fell asleep, 
and the two young men lay as motionless as if 
carved from the rock on which they slept. They 
saw nothing, heard nothing. They did not hear 
the crunch of approaching footsteps; they did not 
see the face which finally looked out through the 
screen of a near-by thicket — a face which appeared 
and disappeared in a most mysterious manner. 

The light grew brighter and still the men slept, 
when a woman stepped out of the thicket and 
sprang lightly upon the rock on which they lay. 
She was scantily clothed in a loose tunic of deerskin 
which was torn from struggling with the thickets 
of the forest. Her bare arms and ankles were 
terribly scratched and bleeding; her hair, though 
she had evidently tried to braid it, hung in wild 
disorder about her face. She stepped upon the 
rock as lightly as a leopard and stooped down and 
studied the faces of the sleepers. First she studied 
59 


AROUND THE FIRE 


the face of Sut, but turned with a shake of her 
head to Om. She leaned over him so long and 
looked so steadily that Oma might have feared for 
her son if she could have seen. At last, apparently 
satisfied with what she saw in the face of Om, she 
kneeled down, and with her face close to his, blew 
gently on his closed eyes. Om stirred and then 
opened his eyes and lay perfectly still, looking 
up into the face of the woman — eyes blue as the 
sky, hair yellow gold like the grass of the river 
meadows before the snow comes. It was like the 
face of Oma, only younger and more beautiful ; 
it was the face which he had seen in his dreams 
and which had made the faces of all the women 
of his tribe seem ugly. It must be a dream, but 
no, she breathed, the drops of morning dew were 
on her hair; her eyes questioned him, challenged 
him ; he had never been able to see the eyes of 
the dream woman. The blood leaped in his veins 
and he knew that he was not dreaming. She 
had come at last, the woman for whom he 
waited. 

As he rose to his feet, the woman drew back, 
putting her fingers to her lips to signal silence. 
She pointed with her bleeding hands to the east 
and shook her clenched fists as if at some invisible 
enemy. She pointed to the marks of thongs of 
rawhide which had cut into her wrists and ankles 
and to her bruised feet. Then she knelt by Om’s 
side and put his hand upon her head. At the touch 
of her hand Om trembled as a leaf trembles in the 
60 


OM, THE CHIEF 


breeze, and then he stood straight as a young fir and 
raised his free hand towards the rising sun. This 
was his woman! The Great Spirit had sent her to 
him. He shook himself like a young buffalo rising 
from his lair. He seized his stone axe and waved 
it above his head ; now his strength should be as 
the strength of ten. 

But the woman still knelt. Om looked down 
on her, and the tide of love and pity rose till it 
seemed as if it would choke him. He lifted her 
gently to her feet and made her sit on a cushion 
of moss. He brought her some of the hare’s meat 
which they had saved, and watched her eat it hun- 
grily. Then he brought water from a spring in 
his cupped hands and bathed her poor bruised feet, 
crooning over her like a mother over her first born. 
And the woman followed his every motion with 
her eyes as a dog follows those of his master. Not 
a word was spoken, but in the childhood of the 
race lip language was less needed than now. 

Om did not need to be told. This was the 
woman whom the red men had carried as a cap- 
tive. She had escaped. She was his. No man, 
red or white, should take her from him. He stood 
before her and pointing to himself said, “ Om,” 
and the woman repeated it after him in, a voice 
which was as sweet as the love song of the wood 
thrush, and pointing to herself said, “ Ulma.” 
“ Ulma,” breathed Om in a voice so low that it 
did not waken Sut, but it had in it both a claim 
and a challenge. For the moment Om forgot all 
61 


AROUND THE FIRE 


but Ulma. She was the first to remember. She 
leaped to her feet and pointed to the mouth of the 
pass. Men — the red men — were already filing 
slowly out of the woods and approaching. In a 
flash Om was the fighting man ready to give his 
life for his tribe and his mate. He roughly wakened 
Sut, told him who Ulma was, and pointed to 
the red men entering the pass. A single look at 
them was sufficient to drive all other thoughts away. 
Even in the dim light it was easy to see what 
kind of men they were. They were wolf men, 
cruel, relentless, hunting in packs and fearing 
nothing. 

So intent were they that they did not notice the 
approach of Lack and the villagers till they were 
almost upon them. Every man who could carry a 
weapon and could make the journey was there. 
Ang was there, and even Wang, though he puffed 
and panted and had not breath left to speak. Noth- 
ing was said, but Om was recognized as leader by 
common consent. Under his direction the villagers 
took their place at the narrowest part of the pass, 
piled great rocks along the edge of the cliff, and 
waited for the coming of the red men. 

At last they came, all unconscious of the nearness 
of an enemy. They came slowly, for they had to 
carry burdens which before had been carried by 
their horses, and they were evidently in a very 
ugly mood. As they stumbled along, their leader 
lashed them with his tongue and sometimes with 
a rawhide whip which he carried. When they 
62 















OM, THE CHIEF 

arrived at a spot where the sides of the pass came 
so near to each other that a man could almost 
leap across, Om gave the signal, and the villagers, 
with a terrible war-cry, hurled the rocks down 
upon the red men. They ran forward, they ran 
back, they huddled together, but there was no es- 
caping the terrible hail of stones. No thought of 
mercy entered the minds of the villagers. They 
were fighting for their homes, their women, and 
their children. 

At last the shouting and groaning ceased. The 
crash of the hurtling stones was followed by no 
human cries. Nothing could be heard but the 
complaining of the brook and the hoarse cries of 
the vultures who were gathering from far and near 
in answer to the call of blood. 

The blood lust was hot in the veins of the vil- 
lagers, and forgetting the exhaustion of their long 
journey and the labors of the morning, they clam- 
bered down the sides of the pass to exult over the 
dead bodies of their enemies and to strip them 
of their weapons; and Om and Ulma found them- 
selves alone with Ang upon the top of the cliff. 
In some mysterious way Ulma had found time and 
the means to braid her hair and wash the blood 
stains from her face and hands. Om thought with 
pride that no woman whom he had ever known, ex- 
cept his mother, would have done so. Taking 
Ulma’s hand in his, he led her to his father: “The 
Great One has sent her to me. I slept, and when 
I awoke she had come with the light of the sun. 
64 


AROUND THE FIRE 


She was captive to the red men, but she escaped 
when their horses ran into the deep woods. She 
is my woman ; I will take her to my cave and she 
shall be to me what Oma has been to thee.” 

As Ang saw the young man, now taller than 
himself by half a head and more powerful than 
any man of his tribe, his breast swelled with pride. 
There was none like him among all the men of 
his race. And the face showed something finer 
than mere brute force. Thought had already be- 
gun to shape the features to finer mold, and love had 
softened and refined them. At last the Great 
Giver had sent a chief whom men could obey and 
love, and he was the son of Oma. His thought 
went back to the bitter winter before the gift of 
fire. This young giant was then a tiny child, 
withering before the cold breath of the snow demon. 
Surely the ways of Odin were wonderful. 

Then he turned to Ulma with jealous questioning 
in his eye. Who was she? Was she worthy to 
be the mate of the son of Oma, the beloved of the 
All-Father? With critical care he studied her face, 
her form, her bearing, and his look softened. Of 
slighter build than Om, she was larger than the 
women of his race. Every line of her lithe body 
suggested power as well as a certain grace rarely 
seen among the women of the young world. She 
was fit to be the mother of -chiefs. But his eyes 
lingered longest on her face. As she looked at Om 
and then at him, her face shone with love and a 
prophecy of things to come which stirred the heart 
65 


AROUND THE FIRE 


of the priest of the Fire Spirit. In her and in her 
children should be fulfilled the visions which he 
had seen so often in the secret cave at the heart 
of the fire. 

At that moment the sun, which had been slowly 
climbing the eastern slope of the mountain, looked 
down upon them. A beam of light touched the 
heads of the young man and woman with gold and 
that of the old man with silver. Pointing with his 
right hand to the sun and raising his left in attitude 
of benediction, Ang said : “ Look, the Great One 
smiles upon you; you shall be the children of the 
Sun. Walk together in the light.” 

For a moment they stood in silence under the 
benediction of the light, the young man and woman 
thinking of each other, the old man of things to be. 
Then Ang spoke to Om in a tone which brought 
him back at once to the realities of the present: 
“ Listen ! The men below us are without a leader 
— they are like wolves, like vultures. Go, lest 
they forget that they are men and Odin forget 
them. Leave Ulma with me. I will take her to 
the cave of Oma and prepare the people for thy 
coming.” 

It was just at nightfall that the victors came 
into the village of Angwang. Ang had brought 
the news, and all were ready to receive them. A 
great fire had been lighted on the altar of the Fire 
Spirit. At the first shout of the coming men, the 
women and children filed out of the village to meet 
them, and lined the path on either side. In front 
66 


OM, THE CHIEF 


of them marched Om and Sut. Om’s eyes looked 
straight before him, forgetful of all but one. Sut 
beamed on all. 

The men bore on their shoulders the plunder of 
the red men. There were weapons of strange shape 
and even stranger material. There were axes and 
spears of something that was harder than stone and 
had an edge finer than the sword grass. There 
were tunics made, not of skins but of cunningly 
woven fibers. And strangest of all, they led behind 
them a horse, which followed them as a child 
follows its mother. That night, as they sat about 
the fire, the strange weapons and garments were 
passed from hand to hand. Sut stood upon a rock 
in the full light of the fire and told the story of 
the discovery and destruction of the red men, and 
the story lost nothing in the telling. Om sat a 
little in the background with Ulma at his right 
and Oma at his left, while Ang stood behind them, 
looking steadfastly at the fire with far-seeing, 
prophetic eyes. 

After the tale had been told and retold and the 
curiosity of all satisfied, Wang pushed Sut from 
his rock platform and made the speech of his life, 
though he himself wished that he could have made 
it longer. But that was impossible, for after the 
first sentence no one listened to him and his voice 
was drowned in the shouting. In fact, he was even 
pushed off the platform by some girls who wanted 
to see all that happened. He would have resented 
it had he not been so fat. And this is what Wang 
67 


OM, THE CHIEF 


expected to oe the beginning but which turned out 
to be the whole speech. “ Let Om, the son of 
Ang, be chief.” Immediately men, women, and 
children shouted, “ Let Om be chief.” Wang 
started again, but only to be silenced by the shouts, 
“ Let Om be chief,” 

And so Om became the first Chief of the men 
of the North, and Ulma — But the words can wait. 


68 









■ \ I 






THE SMOKE WAY 


\ 







































V. THE SMOKE WAY 


ND Om took Ulma to the cave he had dug 



A in the side of the hill which furnished homes 
for the village of Angwang. He made it bigger 
and finer than any in the village. “ He is Chief 
and must have the best,” thought the men who 
helped him. “ It is to be the home of Ulma,” 
thought Om, and nothing could be too good for 
her. After the cave had been hollowed out, it was 
lined with stones and then chinked with moss. 
In the warmest and driest corner was a couch 
made of spruce boughs, moss and leaves, and covered 
with the skin of a great bear which Om had killed. 
A round flat stone at one side served as a table. 
By it was a rough stone shelf on which were 
baskets woven by Oma and pots of curious de- 
sign made by Suta. On still another shelf were 
various woman’s tools given by women of the tribe, 
for the wife of their chief must lack nothing. 
There were needles made of bone for sewing skins. 
Some of the smaller and finer were made from the 
bones of fish caught in the river. The larger were 
cracked and the splinters worked into shape by 
grinding them on rough stone. There were stone 
made from the small bones of deer which had been 


AROUND THE FIRE 


knives of many shapes. Some were used for cut- 
ting flesh, others for scraping skins, or digging the 
marrow from bones. The women had given their 
best, and nothing was lacking, as they thought, 
for comfort and luxury. 

On one side of the cave home of Om and Ulma 
were hung the best of the weapons and plunder 
taken from the red men, axes, spears and knives of 
hardened copper or bronze, and tunics of woven 
cloth of various colors. At the doorway, where 
they could be caught by one rushing out, were the 
tried and trusted weapons of the new chief. There 
was a wooden-handled stone axe or bludgeon, made 
by lashing a split stick to a groove in the axe head, 
with thongs of rawhide. There was a bow as tall as 
a man which only a few men were strong enough to 
bend. A quiver was filled with arrows tipped with 
flint flakes fastened in place by a most wonderful 
glue which would resist anything but fire. Then 
there were flint knives of all shapes with handles 
of various lengths. As the men and women of 
Angwang came to look at the home of their chief, 
they felt sure that he had all that heart could desire. 
There had never been any one so rich as their chief. 

But Om was not satisfied. It was not good 
enough for Ulma. As the winter came on, the cave 
was often damp and cold, and the heat from the 
fire outside did not penetrate it. Ulma, whose 
home had been in the south, often shivered, and it 
made the heart of Om cold. So he sat before the 
fire in silence and pondered. There were things 
72 


THE SMOKE WAY 

which the wisest men of his tribe, even his father 
Ang, did not know. They did not know how to 
make weapons of the dark brown metal ; they did 
not know how to weave cloth. His father had 
learned how to bring fire from the flint ; his mother 
had learned how to bake the clay so that neither fire 
nor water would harm it. Perhaps the All-Wise 
had other secrets. He closed his eyes and talked 
to the Holder of Mysteries: “Teach me to keep 
the cold from the home of Ulma.” When he looked 
up again, his attention was drawn to the fire, which 
burned in a kind of rough open fireplace. Three 
flat rocks formed a kind of chimney. At the lower 
opening the fire burned more brightly than any- 
where else. From the top the smoke streamed out. 
Why not build a fire in the cave and let the smoke 
go out through a hole in the roof? 

The next day he made a hole in the roof and 
placed a flat stone in such a way as to keep the 
rain from beating down into the cave. They built 
a fire inside, directly under it, which burned brightly 
so that the cave was warm and light, and Om’s 
heart was filled with pride — but it was short-lived. 
The wind changed and the smoke filled the cave 
till he could hardly see Ulma. Finally they had 
to go out and crouch about the fire outside till 
the smoke had cleared away from the inside of 
the cave. The villagers shook their heads and said 
to each other : “ Om is a great chief, but even he 
cannot build a fire in a hole in the ground. The 
Fire Spirit loves the open air.” 


AROUND THE FIRE 


But Om was not satisfied. He lay awake far 
into the night, thinking, thinking, but to no pur- 
pose. In the morning he went to hunt with a 
heavy heart. Ulma’s face was white and she 
coughed. He heard the dry hard cough when he 
stopped at some distance to listen. Each cough 
seemed to strike him a dull blow above his heart. 
He started to go back, but what was the use ? 
They must have food. 

That day his hunting took him far from home 
and it was night before he had made his kill, 
so he prepared to spend the night in a cave at 
the foot of the Black Mountain. He dragged the 
carcase of the deer which he had killed into the cave 
and then made a fire at the mouth of the cave, strik- 
ing sparks from . two flints into the dry moss 
which he always carried. As he sat by the fire 
warming himself and broiling some of the meat of 
the deer for his supper, he noticed that the smoke, 
instead of going up outside the cave, was sucked 
into it and then came out from a cleft in the ledge 
higher up. Forgetful of his hunger and weariness, 
he leaped up and went into the cave. It was warm 
and dry and free from smoke. He had built his 
fire directly under a rift in the ledge, which acted 
as a natural chimney. He piled more wood on the 
fire, but still the smoke went up. He threw green 
wood on the fire till it threw off clouds of smoke, 
but it all went up through the crevice and left the 
cave free. Here was the secret for which he had 
sought. His heart was filled with thankfulness. 
74 


THE SMOKE WAY 


Om slept but little that night. He started up from 
short dozes to pile fresh wood on the fire and 
watch the smoke as it poured up its stone channel, 
like a river between its banks. It seemed as if 
morning would never come, but it did, and he sped 
swiftly home. 

When he appeared with the carcase of the deer 
on his shoulder, he wa§ greeted with shouts of wel- 
come, but he saw only Ulma. As she broiled some 
of the venison over the open fire, he told her of his 
great discovery, and his eyes eagerly studied the 
cave and the hillside. He would make a path for 
the smoke like that in the cave on the Black 
Mountain. 

Without waiting to rest, he began his work. He 
brought flat stones and piled them up at the door 
of his cave. Then he made a new hole in the roof, 
not like the old one in the center, but close to 
one of the walls. Finally he made a rude chimney 
with a place for the fire at the bottom. At first 
he worked alone and the villagers looked on with 
critical wonder, but at last they were compelled 
by his faith and helped with good will. 

When it was finished, the whole tribe gathered 
to see what would happen when the fire was built. 
Would the smoke climb the stone path as the 
chief thought? For the first time Om began to 
doubt and he hesitated to build the fire. He beck- 
oned to Ang. Perhaps the Spirit of the Fire would 
be better pleased if Ang should build it. So Ang 
built the fire with great ceremony, and the people 
75 


AROUND THE FIRE 


looked on in awe and silence. The moss and dry 
sticks were carefully arranged. Then Ang took 
two flints in his hands and turning to the east, re- 
peated the solemn fire chant: 

Spirit Red, Spirit Red, 

Is thy hunger fed? 

Spirit White, Spirit White, 

Give to us thy light. 

Sparks leaped from the struck flints into the moss. 
A tiny spot of light like a glow worm, a flame like 
a red tongue, and then the hungry fire roaring 
over its prey. 

The tribesmen gave a great shout, but Om looked 
anxiously at the new-made chimney. At first the 
smoke went up and out, but with a sudden change 
of wind the smoke began to creep through the chinks 
and fill the cave. Om’s heart sank within him. 
Wang muttered, but so that all could hear: “ I told 
you so. You cannot drive the black breath of the 
fire as you would a kid.” 

Thoroughly discouraged, Om sat upon a rock 
with his head buried in his hands. With tears in 
her eyes Ulma came and laid her hand upon his 
shoulder, but he took no notice. One by one, the 
villagers went away, saying to each other, “ It 
may be that the Spirit of Odin has left him.” 

For a while Ulma stood silently by Om, trying 
in vain to comfort him ; then she turned to look 
at his work. The smoke was not so bad as it had 
been when there was only a hole in the roof, but 
76 


THE SMOKE WAY 

still it came out between the cracks very badly. 
Womanlike, her thought was first of Om. If she 
could only stop the smoke, it would bring joy to 
the heart of Om. Odin had showed the secret of 
the clay to Oma ; why should he not show the 
secret of the smoke to her ? “ O Thou who knowest 
the things which are hidden from us, show me the 
secret.” 

As she fell on her knees, she touched a mass of 
clay which she had been molding, and the secret 
was hers. She leaped to her feet and taking the 
moist clay plastered the chinks in the stone chimney. 
When the last one was filled, the fire burned bright 
and not a breath of smoke came into the cave. With 
a glad cry she called Om. He looked long and 
earnestly at her work, but longer and more earnestly 
on Ulma, with a look which had never been seen 
on man’s face before. In it there was both love 
and reverence. “ The Great One has shown thee 
the secret that w T as hidden from me. Thy wisdom 
is greater than mine, as my strength is greater than 
thine. Thou shalt be called the Wise Woman.” 

And Ulma’s face shone like the sun just risen 
from the sea, but she only said : “ Thy heart was 
heavy ; the Revealer spoke to me that I might make 
it light.” 

Then Om called the men and women and chil- 
dren of the village and showed them what Ulma 
had done — how the fire burned and yet the air of 
the cave was not darkened by its choking breath. 
And when they had seen what she had done he took 
77 


AROUND THE FIRE 


Ulma by the hand and led her where all could see 
her, and knelt down before her and placed her hand 
on his head: “To Ulma, wife of Om, the All- 
Seeing One has given wisdom; when she speaks, 
listen, for the secret of secrets is hers.” 

And from that day those who were troubled 
and in the dark came to the wise woman in the cave 
of Om, and they called her the Seer, for she saw 
what was hidden from their eyes. 


78 







THE FIRST MILKMAN 





VI. THE FIRST MILKMAN 


S time went on, the village of Angwang grew 



\. larger. Not merely were the numbers swelled 
by the children that came to the first comers, but 
by new families that wanted the comradeship and 
comparative safety of the village life. ‘Yet there 
was one difficulty which increased with the size of 
the village. Game grew more and more scarce, 
the hunters had to go farther and farther for it, 
and the supply of edible fruits and nuts within 
reach of the village was not equal to the demand. 
It became clear to Om and the elders of the vil- 
lage that something must be done. Either the vil- 
lagers must scatter or they must move to a new 
hunting ground. But they dreaded to do either. 
They had grown attached to their pleasant homes 
by the river and did not want to go back to the 
old separation and solitude. So they lingered on, 
and the food supply grew less, and hunger often 
gripped them and the shadow of famine hung over « 
them. The men went on hunting trips that lasted 
for days and the women saved every scrap of food, 
but more and more went hungry. 

Something must be done. Om and the hardier 
men took long journeys looking for new hunting 


81 


AROUND THE FIRE 


grounds and village sites where nuts and fruits and 
wild grains were more plentiful. On one of these 
trips they followed the river many days’ journey. 
As they went on, the country became more and 
more open. The river meadows spread out wider 
and were covered with grasses bearing sweet grain 
which satisfied hunger. Great flocks of wild fowl 
fed upon them and grew fat. They were so tame 
that Om and his companions killed large numbers of 
them and feasted until it seemed as if they could 
never be hungry again. Here was food enough and 
to spare, but it was many days’ travel from the 
village and there were no sheltering hills. So they 
returned to the village carrying some of the wild 
grain and as. much of the wild fowl as they could. 

The night after they returned all the villagers 
gathered about the campfire and feasted upon roasted 
ducks and geese and tasted the new grain. Some 
were for moving at once to the plains below, where 
food was so plenty, but the wise ones shook their 
heads and reminded the others that the birds stayed 
only for a short time to feed upon the ripe seeds 
and then went on. Then the grain would be 
scattered by the winter winds and there would 
be neither food nor shelter. But Sut and some of 
the younger men were not satisfied. The village 
was good, but plenty of food was better, even 
though it might not last for long. Then the spirit 
of adventure stirred them. Since the slaughter of 
the red men life had been rather tame at the vil- 
lage. Finally nearly a third of the village de- 
82 


THE MILKMAN 


cided to go with Sut to the plains. Om longed 
to go too, but his duty was with those who stayed. 
His father and mother were growing old and had 
to depend largely upon his hunting, and Ulma nursed 
twin boys in his cave. 

It was a sad day when Sut and the pioneers left, 
perhaps saddest for those who remained. Ang 
watched them, as they filed past him, with a sink- 
ing heart. It was the passing of the old order. 
He knew how Om fretted at being one who stayed 
while others went. Still he could do nothing, and 
perhaps, after all, it might be the will of the Great 
One. 

Om had little time for brooding. It is true 
there were less mouths to feed in the village, but 
there were also fewer hunters. Day by day he 
made wider circles in his hunt for game. The 
mother must have more food, for even now the 
boys often cried, hungry at her breasts. 

One day he came upon a wild goat with two 
kids pulling at her full udder. As he was in- 
stinctively drawing the string of his great bow to 
send the death dart to the goat mother’s heart, 
something stopped him, it may be a breath from 
the Great One. Was not the goat mother’s milk 
better than the goat mother’s dead body? Why not 
take her alive and see if the twin boys would not 
thrive on her milk as the kids were doing? 

Om lowered his bow and drew from a skin 
pouch at his side a curious sling made of two 
smooth stones attached to the ends of a bit of 
83 


AROUND THE FIRE 


rawhide about six feet long. Grasping the con- 
necting thong a few inches from the middle, he 
whirled the stones swiftly about his head and hurled 
them at the goat. One of the stones went between 
her hind legs and her fore; the other went in front 
and then swung back, swinging about the forelegs 
till they were bound so tightly that she could not 
move. In a moment Om had her fastened securely 
and was striding along the home trail with the goat 
on his shoulder and the two kids bleating behind 
him. 

Great was the surprise in the village when Om 
appeared with a live goat on his shoulder. No one 
had done anything of the kind before. Why not 
kill and eat it at once, as men had always done? 
Many were hungry and smacked their lips, thinking 
how good goat’s meat would taste. But Om said 
nothing and strode to his cave. Ulma came out of 
the cave with the twins at her breasts. The first 
thing she noted was the two kids, who bleated piti- 
fully at Om’s heels. Perhaps the hungry cries of 
her own children stirred a new sense of sympathy, 
and she said to Om, “ The poor kids, why not let 
them live ? ” But Om’s mind was full of other 
things. He pointed to the babies in her arms. 
“ They are hungry.” He pointed to the full udder 
of the goat. “ There is milk.” But Ulma started 
as if she had been struck. “ The sons of Om shall 
not touch the breasts of a goat.” She stood with 
flashing eyes straining the children to her dry 
breasts. Om stood silent with eyes downcast. He 
84 


THE MILKMAN 


had hoped — but no matter, if Ulma would not. 
He drew his knife to kill the goat, but Ulma stayed 
his hand. 

Then the hungry twins wailed more pitifully 
than the kids, and Ulma’s mother love conquered 
her pride. Laying the boys in Om’s arms, she 
hurried into the cave and brought a small pottery 
bowl and pushed it under the dripping teats of the 
goat. Then she pressed them with compelling fin- 
gers till the white streams filled the bowl. Taking 
one of the boys from Om, she put the warm milk to 
his lips. It gave a surprised sputter and then drank 
faster and faster with great gasps of satisfaction 
till it could drink no more and fell asleep in her 
arms. When the brother had been fed and both lay 
sleeping in deep content, Ulma turned to Om and 
said reverently, “ Forgive me, it was the gift of the 
All-Father.” ’ 

And Om made a long tether for the goat and 
tied her where the grass was greenest, and the kids 
gamboled about her to the delight of the children 
of Angwang. And U1 and Ulu grew fat and rosy, 
and the heart of Ulma was light again. 

By and by the goat grew used to her tether and 
the kindly hands which tended her and stood quietly 
when she was milked. And one day when her 
tether broke, instead of running away into the 
forest, she fed about the village, as if she had made 
it her home, and liked men for companions better 
than the wild animals of the woods and hills. 

How the kids grew and ate, climbed, skipped, 

85 


AROUND THE FIRE 


and ate again! They raced with the children, and 
as the buck grew older it butted the smaller ones 
so that they found it safer to run into the shelter 
of a hut until he went by. 

That was the beginning of new things in the 
village of Angwang. As time went on, each family 
had its small herd of goats. The goats fed them- 
selves and then gave food to their owners. And 
so men learned that sometimes a live animal was 
worth a dozen dead ones. 


86 


RANG, THE RED MAN 




VII. RANG, THE RED MAN 


O N many of his hunting trips, especially along 
the banks of the river, Om had found many 
strange trails, unlike that of any animal he had 
ever seen. The trail always started by the river 
bank and never went very far from it. There was 
a single furrow, such as would be made by dragging 
a slab on the ground or such as might be made by 
some huge lizard’s tail, but there were no footprints 
of any kind, only a series of holes on either side 
which looked as if they had been made with a 
pointed stick. Sometimes when Om set a trap 
near the river the strange trail would lead up to it, 
and he would find that the game had been taken. 

At first he saw it only rarely, but as time went 
on he found it often. He set traps to catch the 
strange animal, but though they were often tripped 
there was nothing in them. He watched as patiently 
as a wildcat at a rabbit’s hole, at places where he 
had often found the mysterious trail, but all to no 
purpose. His anger and curiosity gradually became 
tinged with that most ancient of fears, the fear of 
the unknown. In his efforts to solve the mystery 
he neglected his other hunting and often came home 
empty-handed, so that Ulma soon suspected that 

89 


AROUND THE FIRE 


something was wrong, and he had to tell her what 
was troubling him, as men have done from the 
beginning. 

Together they puzzled over the riddle of the 
strange animal, till finally Ulma made the sug- 
gestion which led to its solution. Whatever it was 
it always came from the river and went back to it. 
Its home must be on the river or in it. So Om 
decided to go far up the river and drift down with 
the current on the trunk of a fallen tree. 

A little above the spot where he had often seen 
the puzzling trail he found two dry tree trunks 
which he rolled to the water’s edge and lashed to- 
gether with vines. Then he cut a pole and pushed 
his rude raft slowly down the stream, keeping very 
close to the rushes and making as little noise as 
possible. Often he lay flat on the raft, drifting 
slowly with the current and steering with his hands. 
Flocks of birds rose from their feeding places with 
a deafening boom of wings. Turtles splashed 
clumsily into the water. Water snakes writhed 
swiftly away. Great fish darted away with a flick 
and flash of silver. Now and then a big lizard 
would yawn lazily at him and seem to estimate his 
possible food value. But he saw no trace of the 
creature which he sought. 

The hours slipped by, and night slowly spread its 
mantle over the sky. The cool mist of evening 
began to rise from the river, and Om shivered, 
partly from cold but more from fear. He decided 
to go ashore and wait for morning, when the heart 
go 


THE RED MAN 


of man was warmer. He rose carefully to his feet, 
balancing himself with his push pole, but he could 
find no place to land. At this point the river wan- 
dered through a great marsh, and a good half-mile 
of treacherous bog and reed thickets was between 
him and dry land. Om knew better than to try 
forcing his way through. If he could avoid the 
quagmires, he could not escape the dangerous snakes 
that swarmed in the rushes. There was nothing to 
be done but to pass the night as well as he could 
on the raft, for it was already getting too dark 
to see. 

So Om drove his pole between the trunks of 
his raft as an anchor and lay down with his leather 
pouch as a pillow and the rough bark for a mat- 
tress. But it was not the hardness of his bed which 
kept him awake. Strange noises were all about 
him. The reeds rustled as if some great body were 
moving stealthily through them, and he sat up and 
grasped his great stone axe with every muscle tense 
and every nerve alert. Then all was silence, and he 
lay down again, only to be roused by a shrill cry 
from the air above him which seemed to go through 
his heart like an arrow. Overcome with fatigue, 
he dozed for a moment, only to be stabbed awake 
by a new horror, as something sinuous and slimy 
and cold slipped over his bare legs and slushed into 
the water. 

When the night was at its darkest, Om was 
startled by a new noise. Some large body was 
pushing its way through the reeds not far from 
9i 


AROUND THE FIRE 


him with a strange gurgling noise. Fresh chills 
crept up his back and pricked the back of his neck. 
His hair seemed to stiffen. He tried to lash him- 
self to courage. He, a chief, son of Ang, slayer of 
buffalo and cave bear, destroyer of the red men, 
shivering like a child, afraid of the dark! But it 
was useless. Even a chief cannot stand before the 
black spirits of the marsh, unafraid. 

Gradually the noise drew nearer, and Om de- 
tected a faint glow like a bog torch. It grew 
brighter, and finally a long black object slid out of 
the rushes a few feet ahead of him. His eyes 
struggling with the darkness, he studied the strange 
object until he caught its outline. A resinous pine 
torch, like a great red eye, glowed at the head of a 
long hollow log. Near the stern crouched a man 
pushing the dug-out through the water, not with a 
pole but with a paddle. With a. deft turn of the 
wrist he brought his craft into the current and passed 
within a few feet of where Om crouched on his 
raft. The torch threw a weird light on the face 
of the paddler. It was the face of a red man, a 
face which glowed in the light of the torch like 
an ember in the fire. The bare arms which wielded 
the paddle looked like the bronze of the red man’s 
weapons which Om had in his cave. With fasci- 
nated gaze Om watched the sweep of the arm 
and the play of the great muscles. He had never 
seen anything like them. One who came within 
their reach would have no more chance than in the 
hug of the great cave bear. 


THE RED MAN 


After all, he was only a man and he had 
mastered the red man before. The blood rushed 
through his veins again, and courage came back 
to his heart. He leaped to his feet and drew his 
bow, but the night dews had taken the life from 
the bow strings and it was useless. He reached for 
his axe to hurl it at the red man, but he was already 
beyond reach, and a sudden bend in the river soon 
hid him from view. 

Cold and hungry, Om waited for the morning. 
At last it came with lagging steps, and he began 
to study the marsh about him. A few yards ahead 
of him was an opening in the rushes, and he pushed 
his raft where he could see better. There was a 
narrow break — so narrow that the rushes met above 
it, and just water enough to float the red man’s 
dug-out. Om tried to push his raft into it, but it 
was too broad. Then he stood up and looked over 
the marsh. In the waxing light he finally saw what 
seemed to be a mound of rushes rising a little above 
the level of the marsh. He fancied too that he 
could see the shadow of an opening. 

It was clearly useless to try to get there by 
foot, and there was no telling what he might find 
if he managed to force his way there. He re- 
membered the huge arms of the red man. Such 
men must be respected even by Om. It was a 
problem for brains and not for brute force. He 
looked about for landmarks and saw on the shore 
above the marsh a great fir tree nearly a hundred 
feet in height. That should be his lookout, and 
93 


AROUND THE FIRE 

he would study the den of the red man from 
the top. 

As rapidly as he could Om poled down the stream 
till he came to a place where he could land. He 
took care to bring his raft to some stones on the 
bank so that there should be no mark of his land- 
ing, and then he took off the vines that bound 
the logs together and pushed them into the stream. 
Leaping from stone to stone, he made his way to 
the high bank, leaving no trace of his coming. 

After having visited some of his traps and fed 
himself for another fast of uncertain length, Om 
made his way to the tall fir tree and climbed to its 
top. From his lofty outlook he could see far up 
and down the river and across the marsh, but he was 
disappointed that he could see little more of the 
red man’s hut than he had seen from the river itself. 
There was the mound of rushes, standing only a 
little higher than the rushes about it, a small en- 
circling pool of water, and that was all. There 
was no sign of any living thing to be seen. 

With the patience of primitive man, Om waited 
and watched through the long hours of the day. 
A great fishhawk lit on a branch above his head 
and flapped away with shrill cries of fear and anger. 
Squirrels chutted viciously at him and went their 
ways. A doe and her two fawns rested beneath 
him during the heat of the day. But there was no 
sight or sound of the red man. 

Again the shadows began to lengthen, and Om’s 
eyes grew heavy with long watching and lack of 
94 


THE RED MAN 


sleep. He propped himself in an easy-chair of 
boughs, intending to doze for a moment, but fell 
asleep and slept far into the night. He woke with 
a start, hearing sounds beneath him, as if some one 
were dragging a log stealthily over the ground. 
His eyes tried in vain to penetrate the darkness; 
he could only follow the strange noise with his 
ears. Several times he started to climb down the 
tree, but the fear of the unknown checked him. 

Finally the moon, which had been hidden by 
black clouds along the horizon, looked out with 
wide-open eye and flooded the marsh and river banks 
with silvery light. With the eye of an owl hunt- 
ing for its prey he searched every open spot. At 
last he found what he sought. At the very spot 
where he had landed the morning before was the 
dug-out of the red man, and a little higher on the 
bank the red man himself. He was not standing 
erect or even creeping, and yet he was moving with 
considerable rapidity. He lay upon his belly on a 
flat slab some eight feet in length. His legs, or 
what was left of them, were lashed to it, and the 
man dragged himself along on this crude sledge by 
driving a sharpened stick which he held in each 
hand into the soil ahead of him and pulling himself 
to it. The mystery of the strange trail and of the 
robbing of his traps was explained. This must 
be one of the red men who had escaped the 
slaughter in the pass. The useless legs which trailed 
behind him had been crushed by the falling rocks, 
but he had lived. 


95 


AROUND THE FIRE 


Om’s mind was filled with wonder. The red 
man must be indeed a man to keep alive in the 
wild without food, without friends, with only his 
hands and his head to help him. For days and' 
weeks he must have suffered untold agony from his 
crushed limbs. Om passed his hands questioningly 
over his own powerful legs. Could he have done 
it? He shuddered at the thought. Only the Great 
One knew. Involuntarily he paid tribute in his 
heart to the manhood of the man who now crawled 
like a snail beneath him. He took his great bow 
and the straightest and sharpest arrow from his 
quiver, but he hesitated. Surely a man who could 
only drag himself along on his belly was not to be 
feared. To shoot such a man from a safe ambush 
was not worthy of Om, chief of the Angwangs. 
While he hesitated, the red man disappeared in the 
bush, the clouds again covered the face of the moon, 
and all was dark. 

Om remained in his fir retreat till the morning 
light came, and slowly climbed down the tree, look- 
ing carefully for signs of the red man. Neither 
eye nor ear gave any hint of him. He prepared to 
swing himself from the lowest boughs to the ground. 
There was a rustle in a near-by thicket, a hum like 
that of a giant bee, and an arrow flew past him 
and buried itself in the tree trunk with a sinister 
“ chut,” pinning a flap of his fur coat to the bark. 
Nimbly as a monkey, Om put the tree trunk be- 
tween himself and the dangerous thicket and swiftly 
climbed higher. He heard, or perhaps it was his 
96 


THE RED MAN 


imagination, a hoarse laugh of derision from be- 
neath him. It was a strange position for Om, war- 
chief of Angwang, slayer of buffalo, cave man, and 
of the red men themselves. He was treed like a 
squirrel by the snail man. His powerful limbs 
were useless. If he had been ten times as powerful, 
he would have been just as helpless. 

Om cursed himself for his folly. He had thought 
himself wise and a great hunter, but here he was, 
trapped by the man he had hunted. The foolish 
hare had as much wisdom as he! And what was 
strength without wisdom! The arrow of the red 
man was more than a match for his strength. Sev- 
eral times he slid down the tree a short way only 
to be sent back by an arrow. It was useless. If 
he had been bound hand and foot, he could not 
have been more helpless. The hours dragged by, and 
hunger began to grip him and thirst to parch his 
throat. How long would Ulma, Ul, and Ulu wait 
at the cave for the chief who never would come 
back? Who would keep the wolf of hunger from 
the mother and the babes? In his bitter meditation 
he forgot to watch his enemy and his ear was dull. 

He was roused by the angry hum of an arrow 
which brushed his face. Another cut the thong of 
his quiver, and it fell to the ground. Om’s heart 
sank within him. He was now a prisoner and 
without weapons. He heard the red man crawling 
about the trunk of the tree and picking up the 
arrows which he had dropped. He was helpless. 
Why did not the red man make an end of him as 
97 


AROUND THE FIRE 


he himself had made of a wild boar caught in a 
pitfall? After a time his attention was drawn by 
a sharp hand-clap to an opening near the tree. 
There was the red man, where for the first time 
he could see him in the full light of day. He 
crouched forward on his slab bed, his maimed legs 
crumpled beneath him. A great bow lay beside 
him and two quivers of arrows, one of which had 
been Om’s, but his hands were empty. With ges- 
tures which could not be misunderstood he beckoned 
to Om to come down. When Om hesitated, he 
picked up his bow and drew an arrow from his 
quiver, so Om slowly climbed down the tree. 

When Om reached the ground, he found that the 
red man had covered every way of escape. He had 
proof enough of his skill to know that a dash for 
liberty would mean sure death, so he stood unarmed 
and humiliated before the red man, thankful only 
that no one of his tribe would see him in his shame. 
In silence the two men studied each other. The 
white man stood erect, unbound, but he was a slave ; 
his life belonged to the red man who crouched on 
crippled limbs before him. It was brain against 
brain and not brawn against brawn, and the red 
man had won. Death was bad, but shame was 
worse. Why did not the red man end it all and 
shoot him to the heart? 

But the face of the red man showed neither 
triumph nor hate, only watchful intelligence. Its 
expression was as hard to read as that of the faces 
in the fire. Then the red man fastened a thong 
98 


THE RED MAN 


of rawhide to the front of his sledge and signaled 
Om to pick it up and drag him. Om did so, 
wondering. Was he to play horse for the crippled 
giant? He wondered still more when the red man 
directed him, not to the bank of the river but to 
the trail which led to the village of Angwang. 
What did his strange captor mean to do? Did 
he mean to humble him before the men of the 
tribe ? 

Just before they came in sight of the village, the 
red man signed to Om to stop. Then he drew 
from in front of him the quiver which Om had let 
fall and tossed it to him. Om grasped it with 
feverish haste. Once more he had the weapons 
of a man and a chief, and he straightened him- 
self; but no, he had not won them back, they 
had been given him as a father gives a plaything 
to a child. The balance of power was again his, 
but he could not abuse it. He looked question- 
ingly at the red man. What should he do next? 
The face of the red man seemed as inscrutable as 
ever. He simply pointed again to the thong trace 
and the village, and Om again went on, drawing his 
strange load behind him, his wonder increasing at 
every step. 

As the strange sledge drew near to the village, 
a great shout arose and the villagers came trooping 
out to meet them. When they saw the red man, 
some of them grasped their weapons angrily, but 
drew back at a command from Om. They were 
speechless with wonder. What did it mean? Was 
99 


AROUND THE FIRE 


he the captive of Om? Why then did he carry his 
weapons before him like a chief? Straight through 
the village marched Om till he came to his. own 
cave, and Ulma came out with a glad cry to meet 
him. When she saw his strange load, she shrank 
back, pushing the twins behind her, and then she 
gave a cry of surprise and went forward to meet 
them crying, “ It is Rang, the Red.” 

As she stood above him, the red man bowed so 
low that his face almost touched the ground and 
laid his weapons at her feet. The eyes of men had 
never looked on a stranger spectacle. The villagers 
stood about in a wondering circle. Om stood with 
the trace still over his shoulder. Rang bowed his 
great body over his helpless limbs. Ulma looked 
down at the prostrate man and the weapons at her 
feet with the look of a queen. Then she turned 
to Om and said in tones that could be heard by 
all : “ This is Rang, once follower of the chief of 
the red men ; when I was a captive, he cut the 
thongs that bound me and I escaped. His face is 
red, but his heart is like that of a white man. 
The Great One has spared his life.” Then she 
stooped down and took his weapons and laid them 
in the hands of Om. Om hesitated a moment and 
then gave them back to Rang, saying, “ Take them, 
they are the gift of Ulma.” 

That night they built a great fire upon the altar, 
and the chiefs sat long in council and listened to 
the story of Om, and at last Ang expressed the 
will of the tribe: “ It is the will of the Great One. 

IOO 


THE RED MAN 


The skin of Rang is red and his hair like the shadows 
of a night without stars, but he has the heart of a 
man and the courage of the great bear, with the 
cunning of the fox. He gave freedom to Ulma, 
wife of Om. He spared the life of Om when he 
had snared him like a bird. The Great One has 
held the mouths of the hungry ones of the woods 
so that they touched him not. He is loved of the 
Spirits. Let him be made a brother of the tribe ! ” 
And all the men shouted, “ Let him be made a 
brother of the tribe.” 

And Ang took the sacred knife from the altar 
and cut his arm till the blood flowed. Then he 
lightly cut the arm of Rang and mingled the blood 
on his open palm, saying, “ Rang, thou art by this 
token a brother of the tribe.” 

And so Rang became a brother of the tribe of 
Angwang and sat with the elders about the fire, 
but he was also the slave of U1 and Ulu. 


IOI 


RANG OF THE THINKING HAND 


A 




















VIII. RANG OF THE THINKING 
HAND 

T HE coming of Rang made a great change in 
the village of Angwang. He was one of a 
race which had made many discoveries as yet un- 
known to the white race. He knew how to smelt 
and shape the bronze used in their weapons. He 
fashioned a loom on which Ulma and other women 
of the tribe wove cloth from the fibers of flax. He 
taught the men of the tribe to make dug-out canoes. 
But in addition to the knowledge which he inherited 
from his race he had a special inventive gift of his 
own. He came to be known as “ Rang of the think- 
ing hand.” The crippling of his legs seemed to 
have diverted all the power of his nature to his 
arms and hands. It seemed to the villagers as if 
there were nothing beyond his powers. 

From the very beginning the twins U1 and Ulu 
claimed him as their own, and he acknowledged the 
claim. At first he made cunning toys for them, and 
as they grew, weapons of finest quality suited to 
every stage of growth. He was both their friend 
and teacher. His big cave, with its smelting forge 
and many ingenious contrivances for making needed 
things, became a gathering place for the boys. 

105 


AROUND THE FIRE 


Under the teaching of Rang, U1 and Ulu became 
more skillful than any men of their race had ever 
been. Om and Ulma looked on with mingled 
amazement and pride at the wonderful things which 
the boys made. While the boys were small, Rang 
had shown no desire to leave the village, but as 
they grew old enough to hunt and the passion for 
wandering came upon them, Rang also grew rest- 
less. He would drag himself out where he could 
watch for the coming and going of the boys and 
turned a deaf ear to the villagers who wanted to 
have odd jobs done for them. ♦ 

When the boys came home from their hunting 
and trapping, Rang listened eagerly to it all, but 
it was plain he fretted at not being able to go with 
them. And the boys, too, found that things were 
never quite the same without Rang. It was Ul, 
the bigger of the twins, who suggested a partial 
solution of the problem : “ We are strong like young 
bullocks. We will draw you out as our father Om 
drew you to the village.” At first Rang shook 
his head and said that he was too big and they were 
too small, but at last he yielded with ill-concealed 
delight. The wander instinct was on him as well 
as on the boys. 

Rang fashioned a new sledge with double run- 
ners and a trace for each boy, with a flat broad 
shoulder strap. His usually impassive face shone 
like a face in the fire as the boys drew him swiftly 
down the village street and out into the woods. 
And Ulma smiled contentedly, for she felt that 
106 


THE THINKING HAND 

the boys would be safe if Rang was with them and 
they could not go far if they dragged him, but 
that was a mother’s mistake, as we shall see later. 

At first the boys were satisfied to take Rang to 
their near-by traps, but they soon longed to go 
farther. One day Rang told them to take him 
up the banks of the river to the spot where his 
old home had been. Then he unfolded a plan 
which had been growing in his mind for a long 
time. They would cut down a great tree and make 
a dug-out large enough to take the three, and then 
they would go down the river as far as they could 
and see the Beyond. 

Rang chose a great fir tree which he had girdled 
long before and which was now dry as a bone. 
First they built a fire about the trunk, keeping the 
fire from going too high by throwing water on it. 
When the trunk was thoroughly charred, they hacked 
it away with their bronze axes until the wood be-> 
came too hard for the soft temper of the bronze. 
It took two days to fell the tree, another to cut off 
a twenty-foot length suitable for their boat. The 
next task was the most difficult and lengthy of them 
all, to hollow it out. First the top of the log was 
flattened, except at the ends, to where the gun- 
wale was to be. Then red-hot coals from the fire, 
which they kept constantly burning, were piled upon 
it until enough of the trunk was charred to be 
dug out. 

It was a long and strenuous task. Rang would 
not let the boys place the coals, but he kept them 
107 


AROUND THE FIRE 


busy bringing them, keeping the fire, and soaking 
the outside of the log with water to prevent the fire 
burning too deeply. After the log was hollowed 
out, Rang shaped the ends and gave a finishing 
touch by carving on the bow the head of a wolf. 
When it was at last finished and equipped with 
light ash paddles, the builders were very proud, and 
they had reason to be. 

When the “ Wolf ” was ready to launch, Rang 
said to the boys, “ I cannot help — you will have to 
drag it to the river.” U1 and Ulu looked a little 
doubtful, but said nothing as Rang fastened the 
trace straps of his sledge to the boat. “ Now,” said 
he, “ pull ! ” and they pulled with might and main, 
together, singly, and by jerks; but the big log only 
stirred a little. The boys looked at each other 
and Rang with disappointed looks. Would they 
have to get the men of the village to help them? 
Half the fun was doing it themselves and keeping 
it a secret. Rang’s face was a blank. He looked 
as though he had never thought of the problem 
of getting the boat into the water. When he 
thought the boys had mastered the difficulty of the 
task, he called them to him. “ Strength,” he said, 
“ is good, but thought,” pointing to his head, “ is 
better. Strength with thought is best.” Then he 
cut a stout pole and showed the boys how to place 
a stone so that one could lift ten times his own 
weight. When it was put in place, Ulu, the smaller 
of the boys, could raise the bow of the boat with 
ease. Next they cut some rollers, under the direc- 
108 


THE THINKING HAND 


tion of Rang, and placed them under the log. When 
that was done, one could drag it while the other 
steadied it and placed the rollers. 

The next day the boys got the permission of Om 
and Ulma to go on a long hunting trip with Rang. 
They did not tell even their parents that they were 
going by the river and not by land. For food they 
took cheese made from goats’ milk and flour made 
from nuts ground between two stones, and dried 
venison. Rang spent most of the day in testing the 
dug-out and teaching the boys how to paddle and 
how to guide it through the rapids, which were 
numerous, though not very dangerous. At night, 
when the villagers were sound asleep, they drifted 
quietly by and camped below the village for the 
night. They slept in the boat and early in the 
morning started for the Great Beyond. It was well 
that Ulma could not follow them with her anxious 
eye. 

As they paddled down the stream, Rang sat in the 
stern and steered, while Ul, as the strongest, knelt 
in the bow ready to push the boat from any rock in 
the rapids through which they passed. Pulled by 
the current and pushed by the paddles, the boat 
went very swiftly down the river, and perhaps not 
even Rang realized how long it would take to work 
their way back. Wood and marsh and rugged bank 
slipped by them as in a dream. By night they had 
gone far. The river grew wider and wider as 
new streams joined with it and the country grew 
more and more flat. Sometimes the marshes 
109 


AROUND THE FIRE 


stretched away as far as the eye could reach. The 
boys thought only of getting on, but Rang looked 
anxiously at each stream as they passed. How 
should they know which to take when they came 
back, and they must come back, for these were 
Ulma’s boys. But still they did not stop. A subtle 
fire in the blood drove them on from the safety 
and security of the old settlement out into the 
great unknown and would not let them stop. Each 
day’s journey brought them into a stranger country. 
Different trees lined the banks, different birds flew 
above them, strange animals peered at them from 
the banks. While the country was low about them, 
great mountains, with cloud tips, loomed in the 
distance. And still the Great Beyond beckoned 
them. The faces of the boys grew thinner and their 
muscles harder. They talked less and looked more, 
looking straight before them as if they were sure 
to find what they sought just beyond the next curve 
in the river. 

Each day they paddled longer and spent less time 
in preparing food and in sleeping. The tenth day 
they pressed on till the dark shut them in. That 
night a distant roaring disturbed their sleep. Some- 
times they thought it was the noise of distant thun- 
der; at others the noise of some great beast. In 
the morning they started early. Scarcely a word 
was spoken. The eyes of Rang were like coals of 
fire. U1 and Ulu seemed like men walking in their 
sleep. The river grew wider and separated into 
many streams, so that it was hard to tell which 
i io 


THE THINKING HAND 


to follow. The marshes were bigger and bigger 
and the grasses and reeds of a different kind. When 
they tasted of the water, it was too bitter to drink. 
And all the time the strange roaring was in their 
ears, growing louder and louder as they went on. 
Sweat streamed from the faces of the feverish 
paddlers, and yet sometimes they shivered. What 
was the Great Unknown which they approached? 
Were they approaching the caves of the Wind 
Spirits? Would the Spirits be angry? And still 
they kept on. 

At last the canoe swept about a point covered 
with low brush and reeds, and their swinging pad- 
dles stopped in the middle of the stroke and hung 
dripping in air. The river suddenly widened, and 
its white banks reached to right and left as far 
as the eye could see. Before them it melted into 
the horizon. Water, water everywhere, as big and 
as blue as the sky. The boat beneath them began 
to pitch and toss and to rush swiftly out into the 
waste of waters though their paddles were still. 
As they drifted on, they were met by white-capped 
waves which tossed their small craft and splashed 
their faces with cold salt spray. Rang was the first 
to awake from the trance of wonder into which the 
sea had thrown them. The waves were growing 
rougher and rougher and the shore was slipping 
away from them. He gave a sharp command to the 
boys, and they turned the boat with difficulty and 
paddled with might and main for the shore. At last 
they reached it, dripping and exhausted, and dragged 


AROUND THE FIRE 


their unsteady boat out on the white beach, out of 
the way of the hungry waves. 

All day they wandered up and down the beach, 
watching the ceaseless beat of the waves, wondering 
at the many-hued and many-shaped shells and sea- 
weeds. The boys swam in the salt water until Rang 
saw the splash of a great shark in their wake. Then 
they stretched themselves on the sand and studied 
the far-off horizon. “ Some day,” said Ulu, “ we 
will make a great boat, twice as big as this, and 
paddle across the Great Water and see what is 
beyond.” Rang shook his head. “ Beyond is the 
home of the Spirits of the Wind. It is not good for 
men to go there.” Ulu looked doubtful and said 
nothing. 

As their supply of food was nearly gone, they be- 
gan to look for game. The boys shot a few marsh 
fowl, but Rang made the great discovery that the 
clams and oysters which could be gotten at low tide 
were good when roasted over a fire. For days 
they wandered on the shores of the Great Mystery, 
drinking in its new delights, and yielding more and 
more to the charm which would some day draw 
them back to it from the ends of the earth. But 
at last the sense of duty awoke in Rang. What 
would Ulma and Om think when the days went 
by and the boys who were dearer to them than 
their own eyes did not come back? It was time to 
take the long homeward journey. 

The first day’s journey was not so bad as Rang 
had feared. For six hours the current was with 


112 


THE THINKING HAND 


them, and they began to hope that Odin had 
changed the flow of the river to help them on their 
journey. But they were sadly disappointed when 
the tide turned and with painful effort they had 
to wrest each foot from the water as it rushed to 
the sea. The next day the current was against 
them all the time, and each day the current grew 
stronger and the rapids more numerous and swift. 
By landmarks which they remembered they knew that 
it took three or four days to cover the same distance 
that they had covered in a day coming down. It 
was a journey to tax the powers of the strongest. 
The great body of Rang lost every ounce of fat 
and seemed nothing but muscle and sinew and bone. 
Though the boys did not suspect it, he did the work 
of two as he paddled grimly behind them with big 
swinging strokes into which he threw the whole 
strength of his powerful body. And U1 and Ulu 
grew hard and fit. They were stripped to the waist 
as they paddled, and the summer sun painted their 
skin till it was almost as red as that of Rang. 

When they had made about half the journey 
back, their first real trouble overtook them. 



THE FIRST SAILOR 






IX. THE FIRST SAILOR 


E VEN Rang’s iron frame could not stand any 
longer the tremendous strain which he had put 
upon it in his anxious care to save the boys. He 
woke one morning with sharp pain in his over- 
worked muscles. No effort of his will could bring 
them to their accustomed task, and he lay groaning 
in the bottom of the boat, cursing the evil spirit 
which had tempted him to take the boys so far from 
their home. For the first time the boys were thrown 
on their own resources. Rang tried to persuade 
them to leave him on the shore and press on alone, 
but the boys would not hear of that. So they laid 
Rang on a bed of leaves in the middle of the dug- 
out, and U1 took the stern paddle and Ulu the 
bow. 

After a few hours’ fighting against the current, 
sometimes losing more than they gained, they began 
to realize what the crippled Rang had done for 
them. It would take them weeks to make the rest 
of the journey, and it might be that they could not 
get up some of the rapids with his weight, without 
his skill and strength. As their food supply was 
nearly exhausted, they had to spend more and more 
time each day in hunting and they made but little 
1 17 


AROUND THE FIRE 

progress. The boys became men as they fought 
the stream. 

Ulu was not so strong as Ul, and it fretted him 
that he could not pull his full share. One night, 
after a hard day’s pull with little gain, they lay 
exhausted on the bank, and Ulu pondered. Rang 
had told them once that “ Strength was good, but 
thought better, and thought with strength best.” If 
he was not so strong as Ul, he must think more. 
As he thought, his eye happened to fall upon a tuft 
of floating grass which slowly drifted up stream. 
He sat up and watched more intently. Nothing 
was pulling it; it had no paddles, and yet it went 
against the current. The breath of the night wind 
was strong on his face as it blew up the stream. 
He leaped to his feet in excitement. It was the 
push of the wind that did it. Why should not the 
wind push their boat as well as the tuft of grass? 
He looked at Ul and Rang. They lay fast asleep. 
With light footsteps he crept down to the boat tied 
to the bank. Then he tore up a thick young cedar 
from its loose hold on the bank and propped it in 
the bow of the boat. Then he pushed out into the 
stream, taking Ul’s place at the stern. When he 
got out into the sweep of the wind, he stopped 
paddling and waited. At first the boat almost 
stopped, and it seemed as if the drag of the current 
was pulling it back. Then the wind strengthened, 
and the cedar in the bow bent before it, and the 
boat began to go slowly forward. Ulu’s heart 
throbbed with the joy of a great discovery. The 
1 1 8 


THE FIRST SAILOR 


Revealer had showed the secret of the fire to Ang, 
of the clay to Oma, of the smoke way to Om, and 
now the secret of the wind to him. Again and 
again he drifted down the stream and was pushed 
up by the hand of the wind upon the cedar sail. 

Ulu slept but little that night. As he heard 
the rush of the wind in the tree tops, he said to 
himself, “ With the wind at his back the paddle of 
Ulu shall be stronger than that of U1 or even of 
Rang.” In the morning he told his discovery to 
U1 and Rang. U1 shook his head and unconsciously 
stroked the swelling muscles of his arm. It was 
because Ulu was not so strong that he dreamed 
such things. Rang said nothing, but was soon lost 
in thought. He lifted his hand so that it caught 
the full force of the wind which had risen during 
the night. There might be something in it. If so, 
why had he not thought of it — he, Rang the cunning 
one, maker of many inventions? He looked at Ulu 
and shook his head. He was a mere boy; it could 
not be. 

But as they were both fond of Ulu they let him 
put his cedar bough in front when they started. 
At first all went well, and both Rang and U1 be- 
gan to think that the boat did go faster, but then 
a gust of wind swept down from a gully in the 
river bank and struck the rude sail on the side. In 
a moment the boat was capsized and the three were 
struggling in the water. Rang clung to the boat, 
and the boys towed it to the shore. U1 and Rang 
said nothing, but they looked much. When they 
119 


AROUND THE FIRE 


started again, U1 threw out the soaked cedar bough 
with a gesture more telling than words. 

For a time Ulu was very downcast and U1 had 
to tell him rather sharply to stop dreaming and 
paddle. But as time went on Ulu’s spirits rose. 
After all, the wind would push ; only you must take 
care that he pushed in the right place. That day 
the current was so strong and they made so little 
progress that even U1 gave up and said that they 
must go ashore and rest. After they had eaten, U1 
and Rang sat with their heads bowed in their hands. 
The water was too strong for them. They must 
try to make their way overland through the trackless 
forest. How could it be done, with the crippled 
Rang? They could not drag a sledge through such 
thickets as surrounded them. 

While the others brooded moodily, Ulu slipped 
down to the shore, put another and bigger cedar 
in the front of the boat, and pushed out into the 
stream. This time the wind blew strong and 
steadily up the stream. When the boat felt its 
full force, it began to go against the current with 
a ripple of water at the bow. U1 sat up and 
rubbed his eyes. Rang slapped his hand upon his 
withered leg. “ Thought is better than strength. 
It would have been better if we had thought more 
and worked less.” 

When Ulu returned from his short voyage, the 
attitude of the others was entirely changed. Their 
affection was now mingled with respect. Rang 
abused himself loudly. Why had he lain like a 
120 


THE FIRST SAILOR 


log in the bottom of the boat? Why had he not 
used his head the more when he could not use his 
arms? He would begin now. If the Wind Spirit 
could push a dug-out against the current with such 
a small cedar, he would push it faster if there was 
something larger. He unrolled the woven blanket 
upon which he lay and which was the one luxury 
he allowed himself. Under his direction the boys 
fastened it with two sticks, one acting as a mast 
and the other as a sprit. 

Their next start was more fortunate. The wind 
was strong and steady. The sail bellied out and 
pulled like a live thing, and they traveled farther 
that day than they had done in any three days be- 
fore. After two months’ absence they sailed into 
the little cove in front of the village of Angwang, 
and there was great shouting and rejoicing. Om 
and Ulma hovered about the boys as if they had 
been brought back from the land of dreams where 
live the men of old, and they forgot to punish Rang 
for taking the boys away. 

And so Ulu became the first sailor and always 
heard the voices of the Great Water calling him. 
One day he answered. 


12 1 



THE GARDEN OF ULMA 



(Spy . - * 


~i- ^ftga 

iXWfr* 

Vn 


i ; 













X. THE GARDEN OF ULMA 


ND Om and Ulma had a daughter Saxa, who 



f\ grew to be more and more a comfort to her 
mother as the boys spent more and more of their 
time out in the forest. Rang, too, who did not 
wholly recover from his rheumatism and had to 
stay at Angwang after his one voyage of discovery, 
was her devoted slave. It was beautiful to watch 
the tender deftness with which the crippled giant 
tended her while she was a baby and played with 
her and made toys for her as she grew older. Rang 
again became teacher and devoted himself to it with 
the singleness of purpose characteristic of the man 
and perhaps of his race. And Saxa was an apt 
pupil. She had not the strength of the boys, but 
she had a deftness and skill which they lacked. 
And she heeded the words of her old teacher, re- 
peated again and again, when she faced some prob- 
lem a little too much for her powers: “Think, 
think, think.” 

While Om and the boys were away on long 
hunting trips, Ulma and. Saxa and Rang were often 
left alone for weeks at a time. There were the 
goats to tend and a few simple domestic duties to 
perform, but time sometimes hung heavy on their 


125 


AROUND THE FIRE 


hands, and Ulma, now that her children were no 
longer babies requiring her constant care, would 
sometimes grow restive. She would say to Saxa, 
“ I wish I were a man and could hunt and trap 
and rove where I wished.” But Saxa was so young 
and had so much serious play on her mind that she 
did not understand. 

And still Ulma fretted. She felt as strong as 
when she had escaped from the red men. She tired 
of weaving cloth on the loom which Rang had made 
for her. She did not like to crouch on the ground 
molding pottery, as many of the women did. When 
her men were away, she began to wander farther 
and farther from the village. She replied to the 
anxious protests of Om that she wanted to find 
herbs which were so bitter to the fever demon that 
he would fly away. In reality, though she scarcely 
knew it herself, she was searching for something 
which seemed worth doing. As she wandered, she 
collected nuts and fruits and wild grain, for no one 
in the village knew so well where things good to 
eat grew. 

One day she found in a meadow some distance 
from the village a new grass with seeds larger and 
sweeter to the taste than any she had seen before. 
She selected some and took them home and grinding 
them into a coarse flour made cakes for Om and the 
boys when they came home. They ate all of them 
and wanted more. They had never tasted any- 
thing as good, and Ulma with true housewife in- 
stinct longed to give them more. On the next day 
126 


THE GARDEN OF ULMA 


she went and gathered all that she could find and 
was preparing to grind it when a thought came 
to her, perhaps from the mind of the Great Re- 
vealer. If she ground all the grain, there would 
be one meal and that would be the end of it. Why 
not save the seed and plant it near the village? 
There would be more and she would not have to 
go so far for it. 

So, instead of making flour from the wheat seed 
— for the new grain was wild wheat — she put it 
in a dry place, intending to put it in the ground in 
the spring; but then she remembered that the seed 
sowed itself in the fall. So she chose a level spot 
not far from her cave, and after burning the tall 
grass upon it, she scratched the surface with sharp 
sticks and sowed her seed. 

Now there was no need to tell Ulma not to 
wander too far from the village. The birds were 
as fond of the wheat as her men, and she had to 
watch her field with unremitting care. Late in 
the fall the ground became green with the new 
wheat, and the face of Ulma shone. Her mother 
instinct had a new outlet in the soil. 

But as soon as the wheat was up a new enemy 
appeared. Goats are not apt to pass by anything 
good to eat at any time of year, and new wheat 
seemed especially good at this time of year. Day and 
night Ulma had to watch her tiny wheat field with 
such help as Rang and Saxa could give. It was 
engrossing business, and Om sometimes grumbled 
a little if Ulma was chasing the goats when he 

127 


AROUND THE FIRE 


wanted something to eat. The villagers too were 
inclined to resent it when Ulma stoned their goats. 
All in all, she had rather a hard time, but she did 
not lack for occupation. 

During the winter she had a rest, but in the 
spring her troubles began afresh. She grew thin 
and anxious trying to defend her precious wheat 
field from its numerous enemies, but her zeal never 
flagged. Saxa, however, often grew tired of watch- 
ing the wheat field. Her mind was full of fancies, 
and she loved to sit by herself and let them lead 
her where they would. Often while she dreamed 
the goats got into the wheat, and Ulma would come 
flying out to drive them away and reproach her for 
her neglect. 

After one of these excursions from the post of 
duty to the land of fancy, when the goats had been 
especially hungry and she very far away, Ulma was 
so angry that Saxa was frightened. She remem- 
bered the oft-repeated words of Rang: “When the 
thing is too big for you, think.” And she thought. 
The goats loved wheat and they did not very much 
mind the few stones and sticks that were aimed well 
enough to hit them. But she remembered some 
thorn bushes that grew on the hill above the village, 
which were the only things the goat would not eat. 
The leaves were bitter as wormwood, and the 
crooked spines were too much even for the tough 
hide of a goat. If the thorns would only grow 
about the wheat field, she would not need to sit 
by the stupid grass and watch. But she could not 
128 


THE GARDEN OF ULMA 


do it herself ; the thorns were too sharp and it was 
too hard work. It was time for cunning thought, 
a kind of thought as old as Eve. 

Now Saxa was almost a woman, and the young 
men of the village thought there was none like her. 
They looked at her out of the corners of their eyes 
as she passed. They brought the finest nuts and left 
them at the door of the cave of Om, and U1 and 
Ulu, who rose early in nut time, were full fed. 
Saxa seemed to see none of them and care for 
none, but old Suta, who saw other things besides 
the pots she fashioned, would nod her head and 
mutter : “ Ah, these girls ! They see most when they 
seem blind.” At any rate, there were a dozen young 
hunters in the village who, as Saxa well knew, 
would do anything they thought she wanted. But 
there were things to be considered, and the next 
night Saxa was wide awake while the others slept. 

Now there was a certain young man, not be- 
longing to the village, whom she had seen some- 
times, who seemed to her more like a real chief than 
any of the others. He was Let, the son of Sut, 
chief of the plainsmen, and he came sometimes to 
see his grandfather Wang and his grandmother 
Suta. As time went on, he came more and more 
often, and Suta — and it may be Saxa — noticed 
that he always came by the cave of Wang. As 
she lay awake and thought, an inspiration came to 
her. Those who cared most for Saxa would build 
the longest piece of thorn hedge for her mother’s 
field, and Let was coming to the village to-morrow. 

129 


AROUND THE FIRE 


Early the next morning Saxa went to the house 
of Wang and watched Suta as she fashioned a new 
and wonderful bowl with the figures of a flock 
of goats molded about its edge. “ Suta,” said she 
at last, “ I am tired of watching the field of Ulma 
and sometimes I forget. If I could put a hedge 
of thorn about it, the thorn would not forget. 
If U1 and Ulu were not away so much, I would 
ask them to do it.” Suta said nothing, but Saxa 
saw her shoulders shake as if something pricked 
them, and she went away knowing that the young 
men of the village would know soon enough what 
the daughter of Om wanted. 

It was a busy day at the village. One by one 
the young men slipped off to the hill with their 
sharpest knives and their oldest and toughest coats. 
That day the goats did not have even a chance. 
There was a procession of torn and tattered heroes 
bearing thorn bushes. The villagers came out and 
jeered or cheered as the mood was, and Rang super- 
intended the work of placing the bushes. Saxa did 
not come out, but watched from the door of the 
cave, and Ulma saw that she looked more often at 
the road which led into the village than at the 
scratched and weary workers. At last Let came 
and stared with astonishment at the strange sight. 
Without stopping, however, he went off to the 
house of Wang, and Saxa watched to see him come 
and work on the thorn fence. But the hours went 
by and no Let appeared. One by one the others 
gave it up and slipped away scratched and weary 
130 


THE GARDEN OF ULMA 

and feeling rather foolish. By nightfall only a little 
more than half of the field was inclosed, and both 
Saxa and Rang were disappointed. 

The villagers slept soundly that night, and no 
one was watching when the full moon rose and 
Let slipped out of the cave of Wang and made 
his way to the hill-side. He carried something 
that looked like a heavy sickle, made of bronze. 
He was dressed in the toughest kind of skins, skins 
prepared to act as a kind of armor in attacking 
savage beasts. Even his hands and feet were cov- 
ered. Silently but swiftly he cut great piles of 
thorn bush. Then he took a rope of rawhide and 
bound them together and dragged them to the field. 
By morning the field was all inclosed with a hedge 
of thorns, and Let was back in the house of Wang, 
but not before he had left at the hut of Om a wild 
rose tied to a thorn bush with a slender piece of 
rawhide. 

When Saxa looked out, she rubbed her eyes and 
looked again. The field was hedged on all sides 
with prickly thorns. Some goats were already 
sniffing disgustedly at the bristling fence. She 
looked at her feet and saw the rose and the thorn 
bush tied together. No one would do that but Let, 
and he had not come out yesterday. While she was 
puzzling over it, Let himself came by and waved 
his hand to her. To have done more would have 
been contrary to the custom of the tribe. She saw 
no sign of thorn scratches on his hands or limbs. 
It could not be he that had built the hedge during 


AROUND THE FIRE 


the night, but some one had. Who was it? She 
went out to the field and walked about the hedge. 
At last she found the clue which she had been look- 
ing for. Let had forgotten his big bronze hook, 
and it lay just as he had dropped it after his last 
load. With a flush like the dawn she picked it up 
and put it- under her loose tunic so that no one 
should see it, and carried it to the hut. She hid 
it behind her bed of boughs and moss, but the sharp 
eyes of Ulma soon discovered it, and said to Om, 
“ Saxa shall be wife to Let, the son of Sut.” 
“ Why,” answered Om, “ she is but a child, and 
besides — ” But Ulma turned away with a look 
of superior wisdom which made him feel much as 
he had done when Rang had treed him, and he said 
nothing. 

So Ulma’s wheat field grew, and many kinds of 
growing things were added to it. Others did likewise 
and food became more plentiful. In this manner 
Ulma became the first farmer and Saxa the first 
diplomatist — But no, diplomacy began with Eve. 


132 


LET, THE FIRST ARTIST 
















XI. LET, THE FIRST ARTIST 


I N the good old days — which were not so good, 
after all, though they had their good points — 
young people were not allowed to see much of each 
other. At first the young men carried off the young 
women, if they were strong enough and the young 
women not too unwilling. But as time went on it 
became the custom for the mothers, and perhaps a 
little later for the fathers, to arrange such matters. 
There would be plenty of time, they said, for the 
boy and girl to get acquainted when they lived to- 
gether every day. So Let could look upon Saxa 
only as he passed her home, and sometimes it seemed 
to him as if she did not see him at all. As a matter 
of fact, Let never put foot in the village of Angwang 
without Saxa’s knowing it, though no one suspected 
it but Ulma. 

Now Let was young and had not yet showed 
skill as a hunter. Om shook his head when the 
young man passed, and said, “ Let him prove him- 
self.” And yet his heart was warm to the young 
man because he w T as the son of Sut. Ulma, too, was 
anxious. Let’s face was always like the morning, 
and as he went through the woods he often sang 
to himself, and his voice made those who heard 
135 


AROUND THE FIRE 


turn to listen. It made Saxa’s heart burn; but 
the song scared away the game. 

And Let was interested in so many things be- 
sides the getting of food. One day a hunter found 
him seated within easy shot of a deer. His bow 
lay on the ground beside him. On his lap was 
a flat white stone, and he was marking on it with 
a piece of charcoal. As the deer fled at the approach 
of the hunter, Let looked up and shouted, “ I have 
him.” “ You mean you have lost him,” grumbled 
the hunter. But Let cared not. He had drawn 
the shape of the deer on the stone with his charcoal. 
Later, he would follow the tracing with a flint pick. 
So Let went home with an empty stomach but joy 
in his heart. Both the people of his own village and 
those of Angwang shook their heads, and when the 
men went to hunt they left Let behind. No one 
understood him but Suta, and so it came about 
that he spent most of his time at the hut of Wang. 
And sometimes Wang grumbled and said that the 
young man ate much and brought little. Then Suta 
turned on him as she rarely did and said, “ Whose 
work brings food to the home of Wang?” And 
Wang could think of nothing to say at the time, 
though he thought of many things afterwards. 

Suta taught Let all that she knew of the art of 
molding clay into wonderful shapes. But Let was 
not satisfied. With his charcoal crayons he made 
pictures on stones, clay, and skins, and Suta looked 
on with shining eyes. The Great Seer had given 
the boy the seeing eye and a hand that could speak 

136 


THE FIRST ARTIST 


a new language. But Let longed to have some one 
else see and like the things which he made. 

One day he discovered a beautiful spot in the 
woods where Saxa went to dream, for girls have 
always had their dreams from the beginning. And 
he took a wonderful picture of a deer which he had 
scratched upon a piece of slate and left it where 
Saxa’s eye would be sure to fall upon it. The next 
day when he looked for it, it was gone, and he put 
still another picture in its place. This time it was 
done in soft clay with a sharp stick and then baked. 
It was the picture of a girl. Saxa wondered if she 
really looked like the picture, and studied her face, 
mirrored in a still pool, to make sure. 

At last Saxa grew tired of having Let do all 
the picture talking, and Let found one day a piece 
of the bark of the white birch, and on it was the 
picture of a young man holding in his hand not 
a spear but a piece of charcoal, and he was drawing 
a deer, not killing it. * So day by day they learned 
to talk the picture language and share each other’s 
dreams and became very dear to each other. But, 
alas, the hut of Let was still unbuilt, and the men 
of the tribe turned their back on him at the council. 
If it had not been for Suta, he would often have 
gone hungry. 

Sometimes Saxa herself grew impatient and 
wished he was more like other men — like her 
father Om, or even her brothers — but when she 
went to the little cave on the hill-side, which no 
one knew of, and looked at the wonderful things 
137 


AROUND THE FIRE 


which Let had pictured, she was glad that he was 
different. Suta was right. There were other things 
besides food and huts and clothes, and she waited 
patiently. 

But Let was soon to enter into his man-right and 
take his place in the circle about the fire, and this 
is the story. 

For many years the village of Angwang had 
grown and prospered. There was food for all, and 
warmth and shelter, and no enemies had attacked 
them. To many of the young people the slaughter 
of the red men was simply an old man’s tale. But 
at last the peace of the village was rudely broken. 
A small band of hunters, of whom Let happened 
to be one, went up the river a little farther than 
usual. They expected to be back in two days at the 
outside. Three days went by, and nothing was 
heard from them. But since the men often remained 
away longer than they expected, little anxiety was 
felt for them, save in one heart — Saxa was anxious. 
She was sure Let would not have stayed away if 
something had not happened. She went many times 
during the third day to the spot where he left his 
picture messages, but found nothing. As the day 
went on, the grip of fear was stronger upon her, and 
her mother could not keep her at home. She wan- 
dered up and down the approaches of the village, 
trying at first to conceal her anxiety, but growing 
less and less careful as night approached. 

Just as the night was shutting in, she stood on 
the bank of the river watching the path that fol- 
138 


THE FIRST ARTIST 


lowed it for a considerable distance. Suddenly her 
attention was attracted to a piece of the bark of 
the silver birch drifting down the stream. Her 
heart leaped as she saw it. Sometimes Let had 
playfully sent picture messages in little boats fash- 
ioned from bark. She waded out into the stream, 
caught the bark as it drifted by, and hurried to the 
shore. Even in the dim light she could see that 
there were rough pictures upon it, so much rougher 
than any Let had ever sent before that she realized 
that this was something more than a love letter 
drawn at leisure. 

With quick footsteps she hurried to the fire 
where her mother was cooking and studied the pic- 
tures on the bark. It needed the intuition of 
woman’s love to interpret them. They had been 
scratched with something sharp, perhaps an arrow 
point, and not drawn with charcoal as usual. That 
showed that the one who had made them had 
expected to send it by water. The rough work 
showed that it had been done in haste and perhaps 
in danger. 

As Saxa sat crouching before the fire trying to 
interpret the pictures, both Om and Ulma came 
and looked over her shoulder, but she was so intent 
that she did not notice them. Ulma was quite sure 
that the scratches meant nothing, but Om’s eye was 
attracted by something familiar. He leaned over 
Saxa’s shoulder and studied the bark drawing more 
carefully. There was the outline of a ragged hill 
which he had often seen in his hunting trips, and 
139 


AROUND THE FIRE 


he pointed his finger to it, saying, “ Hill of the 
Goats ! ” It gave to Saxa the key she needed. She 
sprang to her feet and drew her father’s head down 
so that he could see more plainly. Then she pointed 
with eager fingers. Here were six small figures like 
men, huddled together in a hollow between two 
cliffs. On the cliffs were as many figures as the 
artist could find room for, but evidently drawn with 
greatest haste and under great difficulties. In a 
corner, beneath the larger picture, was a sketch of 
a man creeping on all fours carrying something, 
it might be a piece of bark, in his teeth. In the 
opposite corner was Let’s sign, a hand posed to 
draw. 

The meaning was clear. The hunters had been 
trapped in a pass near the Hill of the Goats by 
a numerous enemy. Let had crept to the river to 
carry his bark message for help. Neither the river 
nor his sweetheart had failed him. Almost before 
Saxa had finished interpreting it Om had seized his 
weapons and rushed into the street of the village, 
giving the weird war-cry of the Angwangs which 
had not been heard for many years. In less time 
than it takes to tell, the fighting men of the tribe 
gathered and started to the rescue of the besieged 
hunters. Saxa, with throbbing heart and eyes that 
burned like fire, sat through the long sleepless night, 
watching as if her eyes could pierce the dark dis- 
tance which separated her from her lover. And that 
night Saxa floated out of the brook of girlhood, 
far out into the stream of womanhood. 

140 


THE FIRST ARTIST 


In the quiet life of the village Om had some- 
times grown weary of inaction. He had no fond- 
ness for herding goats or digging in the soil. That 
was woman’s work, and the hunting was not what 
it had been when he was young. The bullocks had 
gone to safer pastures. Ever the great cave bear 
found it safer to find a den farther and farther from 
the village. There had been less and less to show 
the real power of Om, and some of the younger men 
had begun to wonder if he really was so great a 
war-chief as the old men believed. But that night 
they felt the power of a born leader of men. 
Though his eyes burned with the light of battle 
and his great body seemed tense like that of a 
lion about to spring upon its prey, he was still 
so clearly ruler of himself that they all knew in 
•him their master. He was the head ; they the 
hands and feet. 

All night they trailed in single file, as swiftly as 
wolves and as noiselessly as foxes. Before the gray 
of morning they were near the pass. Om halted his 
men long enough for them to rest and eat, for he 
knew that hungry men are always less courageous 
than those well fed,, and he knew also that it is 
in the chill of morning that man’s strength is 
at the ebb. So he gave his commands. The men 
were to form a great circle about the besiegers 
and at a signal, the weird hoot of the great white 
owl, rush in on the enemy, who would be too dazed 
to know whether a hundred men or a thousand were 
attacking them. For nearly half an hour not a 
141 


AROUND THE FIRE 


sound was to be heard but the occasional sleepy call 
of a sentinel on the cliff. Then came the long soul- 
searching cry of the owl, echoing through the woods, 
and then such blood-curdling yells and cries as 
torture the memory of the man who has heard 
them. 

The red men who had ventured once more from 
their eastern haunts on a foraging expedition were 
caught napping. They had slept little for several 
nights. The handful of hunters were not numerous 
enough to cause them much anxiety, so they had set 
a few men to watch and given themselves up to the 
Sleep Spirit. When the white men rushed upon 
them, many of them were far off in the land of 
dreams and the journey back was too long for them. 
A few made a feeble attempt to defend themselves, 
but the terror of the darkness was upon them, and the 
chill of the morning robbed them of courage. Only 
a few of them escaped, and most of them were 
hunted down in the woods in the days that followed. 

With the morning light, Om and his men stood 
upon the edge of the cliff and looked down upon 
the besieged. At a glance they could see why the 
red men had not rushed in and made an end of 
them. In the middle of the small valley, in a little 
open meddow, was a heap of stones, large enough 
to shield the hunters from the arrows of their ene- 
mies, with no cover on any side for an attacking 
party. A number of dead bodies in the open showed 
how the red men had learned their lesson. The 
body of one lay quite near the stone shelter and 
142 


THE FIRST ARTIST 

was so pierced with arrows that it looked like a 
porcupine. 

At a shout from the cliffs, the besieged hunters 
cautiously raised their heads and saw their fellow 
tribesmen lining the cliff which had been crowded 
with cruel red faces the night before. With a 
great shout they rushed, not towards their rescuers 
but to the river, where they plunged in and drank 
like thirsty animals, for they had been for more 
than two days and nights without water. 

When the rescuers and rescued at last met and 
the story was told, Let was its hero. If it had not 
been for him, there would have been no one left 
to tell the story. They had been resting after an 
unsuccessful hunt, not far from the rock fort in 
which they had taken refuge later, when the red 
men attacked them. As it happened, Let was try- 
ing to draw the outline of the Hill of the Goats 
on a piece of bark when he saw the red men 
approaching and gave warning. Without the warn- 
ing the hunters would have had no chance. It was 
Let also who had crawled to the river with his 
bark message, under shelter of darkness, and then 
come back to his companions when he might have 
tried to escape by the river. In fact, it was as 
he was returning that he had been discovered and 
wounded. 

After the men had fed and rested, they made a 
litter of fir boughs and tenderly placed the wounded 
Let upon it and bore him back in triumph to the 
village. Long before the main body arrived, mes- 
143 


AROUND THE FIRE 


sengers had carried the news, and as they entered 
the village the street was lined with eager women 
and children and old people. When the litter ap- 
peared, with Om walking a few feet in advance, 
they raised a great shout : “ Om ! Om ! Slayer of 
the red men ! ” There was a moment’s silence and 
then another shout : “ Let of the talking hand and 
the brave heart, maker of pictures! ” At the shout- 
ing Let raised his head with difficulty and looked, 
not at the shouting crowd, but at Saxa’s face as she 
came to meet him with a light more beautiful than 
that of morning in her eyes. 

And Om took Let to his own cave, and Ulma 
put healing herbs on his wound, and Saxa fed him, 
as a bird mother feeds her young, till his strength 
came back. 

At the great fire Let of the thinking hand came 
into his man-right and sat among the men of the 
tribe. And so Let became the first artist, and men 
loved him because he was loved of Odin. 


144 


\ 


SAX, THE FIRST MUSICIAN 



. 







XII. SAX, THE FIRST MUSICIAN 


E VEN in the boyhood of Ang the oldest could 
not say who was the first singer. When 
Ang was old and wise and had seen many things 
and pondered on them, he told the children, as they 
came to him to hear of times long gone, that sing- 
ing began with man and Ad sang to Eva as the 
thrush sings to his mate. But music was born in 
the village of Angwang, and Sax, son of Saxa 
and Let, was the first musician, and this is the story 
of how the Great One gave him the power to make 
the reeds sing. 

Now Let became the husband of Saxa, and the 
men of the village of Angwang made a cave home 
t for them almost as large and fine as that of Om 
the chief, for they all loved him for his smiling 
face, joyous voice, and brave heart, and reverenced 
him because the Great One had given him the power 
to make the charred wood and sharp flint speak. 
Next to Ang, the aged priest, and Om, the great 
war-chief, he was most honored. 

And Let did more than make pictures on clay, 
stone, bark, and the skin of animals. With great 
care he made better pictures for words which even 
the children could learn to read and write. So it 
147 


AROUND THE FIRE 


came to be that men who went on long journeys 
could send back messages to those at home on bits 
of bark or wood. Children came to the cave of 
Let, and he showed them how to use the charcoal 
and pick, how to picture the things which they 
saw and to make signs to stand for pictures. They 
came so early and stayed so long that Saxa had 
to drive them away sometimes, and the old people 
grumbled because the young people liked to make 
pictures so much better than to tend goats or bring 
wood. 

There came to the cave of Saxa and Let from 
the land of the little folk, which is near the dwelling 
of Odin and Freya, a son, and they called him Sax. 
As he grew to be a man, there was no one like him 
in all the village. He was big like his grand- 
father Om; he had the cunning hand of his father 
Let and he was a dreamer of dreams like his mother 
Saxa. The Great Spirit had given him all the gifts 
but one. His voice was hoarse like the raven’s, and 
yet the spirit of song was in him and he tried again 
and again to sing, but even the boys who loved 
him and the girls who admired him could not hide 
their laughter. 

Sax could do everything except sing, and that 
was the thing which he most longed to be able to 
do. He went far away into the woods, where no 
one would hear him, and tried to bring music to 
his tongue, but it was useless. Sax’s ear was good, 
though his voice was poor, and he finally gave it 
up; but still the spirit of song within him called. 
148 


SAX, THE MUSICIAN 

And the time came when the call became so loud 
that he could not escape from it day or night. 

In the village of Sutlack on the plains there was 
a girl whose name was Lala, and she sang so that 
the birds would stop to listen and men’s hearts kept 
time to the pulsing of her song. As Sax heard her, 
it seemed as if his heart would burst with its long- 
ing to pour out its own love in an answering song. 
Once a hoarse note escaped him, but the look on 
Lala’s startled face stopped all its fellows in his 
throat and he never tried to sing again. But the 
love of Sax for Lala grew, and he could find no 
language for it which would reach the heart of the 
girl. With the intuition of a lover, he knew that 
melody was the only path to the heart of Lala — 
and he was dumb. He brought the finest of game 
and the choicest of fruits and nuts and left them 
at the cave of Lack, her grandfather, but she gave no 
sign. While she looked on, he excelled all the young 
men of the tribe in running and wrestling and 
shooting, but she listened to the song of the birds 
and cared nothing for his strength and skill. There 
was not a girl in the village of Angwang or the 
village of Sutlack who would not have been glad 
to share the cave of Sax, except Lala, and Sax 
cared only for her. 

Now Ang had gone his way to the land of the 
fathers, but Oma lingered. She was almost blind 
and had to be carried to the council fire of her 
people. But as the outer eye grew dim the inner 
eye grew bright, and there was no one in the north 
149 


AROUND THE FIRE 


land who was so wise as Oma. She was wise w T ith 
the wisdom of the fathers. In the long years of her 
journey in the land of Now she had seen and 
heard many things and learned their meaning, 
but more than these the Wise One had given 
her the power to read the heart as Om had read 
the w r oods and the streams. And Sax came to Oma 
and told her his trouble. The old woman listened 
in silence and made no answer for so long that 
Sax thought she had not heard and began to tell 
his story again. Then Oma roused herself as from 
a dream: “ No, I heard thee. My spirit has been 
living again the days that are gone. I have been 
hearing again the spring song of Ang, and my heart 
has been again the heart of a girl. There is no 
road to the heart of Lala but that of song, and 
the Great One has not given thee the singing 
tongue.” 

The heart of Sax sank within his breast, and he 
sat long in silence with his head bowed. Then he 
turned again to the old woman : “ Is there no other 
way?” “There is none,” answered Oma, and it 
seemed the voice of fate. “ Then,” said Sax, “ I 
will find that way.” As he knelt by the old woman’s 
knee, he straightened himself and threw back his 
head as if challenging invisible enemies. And she 
laid her hand upon his head and pushed his hair 
back from his brow, murmuring to herself. Ang 
and Om and Saxa — they all lived there, and her 
own blood was his. Then a light came to her face: 
“ In time of need Odin has spoken to the people. 
150 


SAX, THE MUSICIAN 

In the cruel cold he spoke to Ang in the tongues of 
fire. He gave to Oma the secret of the clay. He 
taught Rang to make the wood and stone and 
copper his servants. He showed to Om the smoke 
trail. He made Ulu the master of the winds. He 
gave to Let the speaking hand. Go follow the 
stream as it sings its way to the Great Water and 
listen for the voice of the Revealer. It may be 
that he will show you how to follow the trail 
which leads to the heart of Lala.” 

So Sax took a skiff which he had made for him- 
self, one lighter and swifter than any that he had 
made before, and followed the singing water. In 
the morning he heard the song of the birds. At 
noon he drowsed to the humming of insects. At 
night he listened to the music of the stream, and his 
soul was stored with harmony and melody, but it 
could find no voice. 

At last he came to the Father of Waters. All 
day long he heard the thousand voices of the sea 
and sky and land mingling about him. Song, song 
everywhere but on the lips of Sax. Where was 
the Keeper of Secrets? Had he gone on a long 
journey? Had he forgotten? Had he no more 
secrets? Was it too great a task even for the 
Great One to give song to the one who had none? 
He fell into a troubled sleep upon the sand, but was 
awakened by a soft sweet sound at his ear, a sound 
which seemed to bring together all the mystic melo- 
dies of earth and air and water. He lay very still, 
fearing that the music would vanish like a dream of 
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AROUND THE FIRE 


the night, but it did not. He slowly turned his head 
and saw near him a great shell. Taking it in his 
hands, he pressed it close to his ear and listened with 
delight to the wonderful songs of the sea. His heart 
beat heavily and his breath came quickly. Perhaps the 
secret was hidden in the heart of the shell. 

The next day he listened to the heart of many 
shells. He found that different shells made dif- 
ferent sounds in different keys. But still the secret 
was not his. How could he make them sing his 
song instead of their own ? He found that he 
could make a sound which was clear and sweet by 
blowing on the lips of some of them, but it takes 
more than one note to make music. 

Day after day he wandered on the shore and 
tried to pluck the secret of song from the heart of 
the shell. He collected shells of all sizes and ar- 
ranged them before him and by blowing one after 
another finally made a series of sounds which were 
something like a musical scale, but Sax knew that 
the songs which pressed behind his dumb lips could 
never find voice through such slow and uncertain 
sounds as these. He must search again. He lay 
down on the sand discouraged but not defeated. 
He would not go back until he had found it. 

As he lay full length on the white beach looking 
out upon the waters and wondering if the secret 
lay beyond it, his hand, as it played with the sand, 
fell upon a dry reed which some high tide had cast 
above the ordinary level of the waves. He toyed 
with it unthinking and unseeing, little dreaming that 
152 


SAX, THE MUSICIAN 

he held the magic wand of music within his grasp. 
With thoughts still trying to span the sea, he idly 
held the reed in his hand. It was hard as a stick, 
but so light that it finally drew his wandering 
attention. He glanced at it. It was hollow. He 
held it to his eye towards the light, and not being able 
to see through it, tried to blow out the dried pith 
which stuck in one end. As he did so carelessly, 
he blew across the open end of the reed, and was 
called back from the land of aimless dreams by a 
low, soft whistle. He blew again, and louder. 
Again the answering note, only clearer and stronger, 
a note which stirred the heart like the woodsy 
whistle of the thrush. He started to his feet with 
a cry of joy. While he looked afar, the secret lay 
at his feet. In his excitement he broke the fragile 
reed in two. With sinking heart he looked at it. 
Had he lost it so soon after finding it? He blew 
again on one of the shorter pieces. Again an an- 
swering whistle, but this time higher and more 
shrill. 

Joy filled his heart. At last the Revealer had 
spoken. The reeds should give voice to the songs 
of his soul. With anxious care he sought for reeds 
of varied lengths and varied sizes in the marshes 
which bordered the mouth of the river. He tested 
each till he found what suited him ; then he bound 
them together. It was a crude thing, and yet the 
soul of Sax was so full of music that he made it 
sing. Then he made better and better ones. At 
last he made one out of a kind of pith alder, which 
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AROUND THE FIRE 


satisfied him. He arranged its pipes so that he 
could sound a series of notes from low to high. 
Then he began to imitate upon it the song of birds 
and at last the songs of Lala and the songs which 
he had made for her and could not sing before. 

As the days went by, his skill grew greater and 
the songs sweeter. He tired of playing to him- 
self, the sea, and the woods. The reeds must sing 
to Lala. Each night as he camped by the river’s 
bank on his home journey he taught his pipe new 
and more beautiful love songs. 

Sax drew near to the village of Sutlack just as 
the sun was setting. Instead of going ashore he 
fastened his ski# near the hut of Lack and waited. 
Suddenly there came from the top of a tree just 
above him a song more beautiful than any he had 
ever heard before. It was Lala, who, like the birds, 
loved to sing from the upper air of the tree tops. 
Again and again she sang, and Sax listened in a 
dream of love and wonder. At last she stopped 
and for a moment there was silence; then there 
came up as if from the heart of the river such 
music as Lala had never heard before and never 
dreamed of. She listened breathlessly with heart 
keeping time with the melody. 

Sax’s soul poured out music till the valley seemed 
full to overflowing and spilled a stream of song 
over the encircling hills. The villagers listened in 
wonder and awe, thinking it the song of the River 
Spirit. Lala, after the first delight and wonder, 
peered down through the branches and saw Sax 
154 


SAX, THE MUSICIAN 

and his singing pipes. As she listened, she seemed 
to hear the very soul of Sax finding voice, and the 
soul of all things, and most of all her own soul. 

By and by she came down to the river’s bank, 
and Sax found his way to the heart of Lala by 
the path of song, for he gave a voice and a soul 
to the reeds. 

So Sax became the first musician and the father 
of those who give to nature and to man a thou- 
sand voices and enrich life with melody and 
harmony. 




155 



















































































































































































































THE CALL OF THE GREAT WATER 













XIII. THE CALL OF THE GREAT 
WATER 



L and Ulu grew to be men and mighty hunters. 


They had caves of their own, sat among the 
men of their tribe at the council fire, and had 
enough to eat and to wear. Many of the young 
men of the tribe envied them and said, “ If we 
had as much as U1 and Ulu, we should want no 
more.” But the young men themselves were rest- 
less and cared less and less for the ordinary life 
of their tribe. Day and night they heard the lap 
of the waves on the distant shore of the Great 
Water, and the unknown beyond beckoned them. 
They said but little to each other, but each knew 
that the same hidden fire of unrest burned in the 
heart of the other. 

Often they climbed to the highest peak of the 
Black Hills and looked eagerly to the western sky. 
They built larger and larger dug-outs, felling and 
hollowing out the trunks of enormous trees. At last 
they fashioned one large enough to carry a dozen 
men and they fitted it with two sails, a great steer- 
ing paddle, and a covered hatch in front. With 
some other adventurous men of their own age they 
followed the stream to the sea and spent weeks 


159 


AROUND THE FIRE 


feasting on the sea food, taking short voyages to 
test their boat, yielding more and more to the 
magnetic pull of the West, and — the Mystery be- 
yond. A few experiments convinced Ulu, who was 
by common consent master sailor, that their boat, 
large as it seemed on the river, was not large 
enough for the Great Water. It was long and 
narrow, without a keel, and it rolled and tipped 
dangerously, even in a moderate sea. When they 
headed it into waves of any size, the water would 
come over the low bow and swamp it. Again and 
again they had to swim ashore, pushing their water- 
logged craft before them. 

Instead of going back to the village of Angwang 
as they had done before, U1 and Ulu and their 
companions found a sheltered cave not far from 
the mouth of the river and built huts for themselves 
and laid the foundations of a village. Food was 
plenty, and they gave themselves to learning the 
ways of the sea. Ulu undertook the problem of 
making a bigger boat. No tree trunk was large 
enough, so they fastened two great trunks together 
with great wooden pins, laboriously boring holes 
with a sand drill, an invention of Rang’s. It took 
them months to finish the big dug-out, and when it 
was finished it was little, if any, better than those 
made of a single tree trunk. 

U1 shook his head, saying it could not be done, 
and the others agreed, excepting Ulu. While the 
others gave themselves up to fishing and hunting, 
he went off by himself. If old Rang had been with 
160 


THE GREAT WATER 


them, he would have said, as he had said so often 
when they were boys, “ When the thing is too big, 
think.” So he thought and thought and thought 
again. He made little models of boats of various 
shapes, from soft wood, and floated them on the 
bay to see how they would take the smaller 
waves, but all, as it seemed, to no purpose. His 
companions would often point their hands to 
their heads with sober nods, when his back was 
turned. 

One day, when a stiff breeze was blowing, U1 
and two of his companions went out in the old 
dug-out, but Ulu stayed on the shore, thinking, 
and watching his toy boats. Soon he noticed that 
the men in the boat were having bad weather. 
Though the waves were not very high, they were 
sharp and crested and each wave spilled over the 
bow. In a few moments U1 gave it up and brought 
the boat back to the beach nearly filled with water. 
Ulu shook his head. That kind of a boat would 
not do. Just then his attention was called to a 
wild duck sitting easily on the tossing water. There 
was the model for his sea boat. It must be broader, 
and the bow must be high enough to throw back 
the water, and it must be lighter, so that it could 
rise quickly to meet the waves. But how could it 
be done? Ulu longed for the cunning hands and 
contriving brain of Rang, but Rang was far away 
and Rang was old. If it was to be done, he was to 
do it, so he gave himself again to his task. He made 
models following the lines of the duck and found 
161 


AROUND THE FIRE 


that they were steadier and better. But the prob- 
lem was to make one large enough and light 
enough. It could not be made by hollowing logs. 
There must be some other way. 

One day, as he wandered upon the beach in deep 
discouragement and all but ready to give it up 
and go back to the village and live as his fathers 
had done before him, he came upon the carcase of 
a porpoise which had been tossed up by the waves. 
Gulls and vultures had picked away all the flesh, 
leaving only the tough skin and bones. The birds 
had been able to get at the flesh only through the 
softer skin of the upturned belly, so the skin on 
the sides and back was unbroken. He pushed it 
into the water with his foot, where it floated as 
lightly as a hollow tree. A gust of wind caught it 
and it sailed swiftly from him. With a cry Ulu 
dashed after it into the water and caught it with 
great difficulty. Perhaps here was the secret. He 
dragged it above the reach of the waves and studied 
it. The bones made a light frame w r ork ; the dried 
skin a perfect covering. 

For weeks Ulu and U1 and their companions 
labored at a new type of boat. First they made a 
framework of ash, like the skeleton of the fish 
model. Then they covered it with skins collected 
with great care and sewed together with sinews. 
Finally they covered it with pitch to keep out the 
water and protect the skins. When it was finished, 
it did not look very well, but it was, after all, a 
better sea boat than the narrow rolling dug-out. 
162 


THE GREAT WATER 


It was light and elastic, but with considerable 
strength and carrying power. 

After a few trial trips to test its sea-going quali- 
ties, Ulu and his companions fitted it for a longer 
voyage than they had ever attempted before. They 
filled goatskins with water and stored dried venison 
and wheat flour under a rude hatch in front. The 
other men expected to take a trip up the shore, but 
not out of sight of land, but Ulu and U1 had hearts 
set on the Great Beyond and eyes searching the 
far horizon. 

They set sail on a beautiful spring morning. The 
blue of the sea answered the blue of the sky. A soft 
land breeze pushed them gently seaward. The sun 
was rising from great white pillows of cloud. Never 
had there been a fairer morning than this on which 
these pioneer voyagers set sail. The spirits of the 
men were in tune with the brightness of the day. A 
new world beckoned to them with smiles, as a mother 
beckons to her child. So they sailed and sailed with 
their faces towards the west and with a following 
wind. Not even the most timid thought to look back. 
Ulu and U1 would not. Finally the eastern shore 
sank back lower and lower, and to east and west 
and north and south there was nothing but water 
as far as the eye could see. 

As midday approached, it grew hotter and the 
breeze died away. When the weary men dropped 
their paddles and reached for water, one looked 
about him and gave a startled cry. Where the 
friendly and familiar shore had been, was only the 

163 


AROUND THE FIRE 


bluish smoke line of the horizon. For a few 
moments not a word was spoken. The breeze had 
gone. There was not a sound but the sluggish 
lapping of the waves on the boat’s side and the 
occasional call of a gull as he swooped in wide 
circles about this strange new fish which only swam 
on the surface of the water. They were all brave 
men in an age when only the brave could live, but 
as they looked stealthily into each other’s faces they 
saw the lurking shadows of fear. They had been 
lonely before, but never with a loneliness like this. 
There was not the comfort of a single familiar 
landmark. In the blue haze of the midday there 
was a strange look in each face. When one spoke, 
he seemed startled at the sound of his own voice and 
did not speak again. 

Ulu alone did not seem moved by the strange 
new isolation of mid-sea. U1 looked at him ques- 
tioningly, but his gaze did not waver from the 
western horizon. It was as if he saw something 
beyond their vision which held him by its magic 
spell as the serpent holds the charmed bird. The 
men whispered to each other and started guiltily at 
their rough breathing. The heat was great and the 
men were wet with sweat, but they shivered now and 
then. When Ulu, as if waking from a trance, gave 
the signal to go on, they paddled feverishly, glad of 
the diversion of occupation. They wished that he 
would turn the bow of the boat to the east, but there 
was something in the faces of the brothers which 
kept them silent as the boat headed always west. 

164 


THE GREAT WATER 


As for Ulu, he thought of nothing but the some- 
thing just beyond the horizon, and U1 studied noth- 
ing but the face of his brother. Only the brain of 
Ulu and the favor of Odin could save them from 
— he knew not what. Still Ulu gave no sign. If 
he had been wiser in the ways of the sea, he would 
have known that deadly danger lurked in the sky 
above them and in the water about them. The 
wind ceased entirely. A fog slowly rose and en- 
veloped them, but so gradually they could not tell 
when it came. The water about them changed from 
purple to an oily black, and at last the gray blanket 
hid even that. Ulu, as he sat at the stern, grew 
dimmer and dimmer till the man who sat next him 
reached out his hand and touched him to be sure 
he was there. The men stopped paddling and lis- 
tened, breathless. In the great silence even the 
dripping of their paddles startled them. What 
next? 

Now that the western horizon had been hidden 
from him, Ulu seemed to waken as from a dream. 
For the first time he felt the grip of fear on his 
own heart. Perhaps the spirits of the Beyond did 
not love men and had sent this great mist to blind 
prying eyes. But what could he do? He could not 
tell the sun rising from the sun setting when he 
could hardly see his hand before his face. For the 
first time he realized what it would mean if he 
had been wrong and had gone against the will of 
the Great Ones. These men, his companions, would 
pay the penalty of his folly. 

165 


AROUND THE FIRE 


As he sat with head bowed on his breast, a breath 
of cool air touched his face. There was a rustling 
in the air above them. The mantle of mist lifted ; 
the black water appeared again, and at last the 
wide expanse of the sea, but a very different sea. 
It looked like the face of a swarthy giant just 
breaking into uncontrollable rage. It did not need 
the skilled eye of a seaman to see that worse was 
coming, and it came with terrible rapidity. About 
them the sea was black. To the southeast there 
appeared a gray blue streak of rumpled water that 
rushed towards them with an ominous whistling 
sound, like that of wind in the tree tops; a gust 
smote them on the quarter, and their frail bark 
rocked dangerously ; then the storm closed in upon 
them. Gray wolf waves rushed at them, and the 
salt foam from their hungry jaws flicked the faces 
of the frightened men. Above them the huntsmen 
of the air swept by with awful roar, hurling their 
bolts of fire. The wind lashed them and slashed 
them and tossed them. Following a blind instinct 
rather than reason, Ulu kept his men paddling 
steadily against the wind. Sometimes green water 
came over the gunwale and two men had to bail for 
life. A hundred times it seemed as if the end had 
come, and the men would have dropped their paddles 
if it had not been for Ulu. With the danger his 
courage grew. The storm was not so terrifying as 
the gray stillness which had come before it. 

And at last they outrode the storm, and when 
the clouds parted and the wind had gone roaring 
1 66 


THE GREAT WATER 


back to its northern dens and the sea grew more 
quiet, the sun looked down on one of the strangest 
crews that ever sailed the sea. The boat had been 
badly strained in the storm and leaked so fast that 
half of the men had to bail in order to keep it afloat. 
Water still trickled from their matted hair, down 
their streaming backs. In the eyes of the men was 
the wild look often seen in the faces of those who 
have been almost drowned. But in Ulu’s face shone 
the light of conquest. The black ones had fled and 
they were still alive. “ Look,” cried he, pointing 
to the northwest, “ they have gone. We are here. 
The land of the sun-setting calls us.” 

The western horizon, cleared by the storm, was 
now clearly marked by a land line which grew 
thicker and thicker as they paddled towards it. 
Just at sunset they came to a low-lying coast wooded 
to the very shores and dragged their boat on the 
beach. It was fortunate that they had reached 
land when they did, for the boat would have floated 
only a few hundred yards more. 

Weary and exhausted, they made no other prep- 
arations for the night than to eat some of the 
water-soaked provisions and dig a hole for a bed 
in the warm sand. Through the first part of the 
night they all slept the sleep of utter exhaustion, 
but as the chill mist of morning settled on shore 
and sea Ulu awoke. He tried again and again to 
go to sleep, but failed. When the light began to 
break, he arose and decided to spy out this new 
land before his companions awoke. 

167 


AROUND THE FIRE 


As he climbed a low bluff above the beach where 
his companions slept, the day was breaking. All 
about him was apparently trackless forest. It was 
useless to try exploring it alone. He turned and 
looked down on his companions, who looked like 
driftwood on the shore, and out upon the sea which 
they had crossed with such danger. His heart sank 
within him as he thought of the distance which 
separated them from the old familiar scenes. Was 
this the land which had so long lured him in his 
dreams? Trees, trees everywhere. They did not 
need to cross the great water and risk their lives 
to find trees. 

He was startled from his melancholy musing by 
a sound like the call of a wood pigeon, and turned 
to see a woman standing within a few yards of 
him. Her hands were extended toward him with 
open palms, a sign of peace as old as the human race, 
and yet there was something in her appearance more 
terrifying than an armed man. Her long hair, 
which hung in heavy masses on her shoulders, was 
red — the red that glows like an ember in the fire 
and glistens like burnished bronze in the sun. Her 
face showed, even in the dim morning light, the 
plentiful kisses of the sun. Her body was more 
powerful than that of any woman whom Ulu had 
ever seen, but still had grace and beauty. She was 
young, younger than Ulu, and, as he thought, the 
most wonderful and beautiful woman he had ever 
seen, and yet there was something about her to bring 
fear to the heart of even a brave man. The some- 
168 


THE GREAT WATER 


thing was in her eyes, which were the gray blue 
of the veldt, and in the expression of her face. 
Her eyes seemed to look through Ulu and beyond; 
they pierced him like arrows; they cut him like 
knives, and yet it seemed as if she saw not him 
but something in him or behind him. Her face had 
the texture of a child’s, but the look of one who 
has seen nothing but bloodshed and cruelty for twice 
a lifetime, a face terrifying because of its mingling 
of age with youth and grimness with beauty. 

Though she said not a word and only looked 
fixedly at him, Ulu knew that she was one of those 
whose spirits had wandered from their bodies, driven 
out perhaps by some horror of fear or suffering. 
Under the woman’s look, Ulu’s dread and uncer- 
tainty grew, and he tried to slip away to his com- 
panions. He had taken only a step or two, how- 
ever, when he was stopped by the pressure of a 
hand on his shoulder. The touch was light as that 
of Ulma, but the hand of the giant Om could not 
have stopped him more quickly. He was more terri- 
fied than he had ever been in his life before, but 
he was as helpless to resist as a child in the hands 
of its mother. 

Without speaking or looking at him, she gazed 
at his companions on the shore for a time. Then 
she turned and, taking his hand in hers, led him 
by a narrow path into the woods. Fearful and 
reluctant as he was, he followed her as unques- 
tioningly as one in a hypnotic trance. For the time 
he had no will but that of the mysterious woman. 
169 


AROUND THE FIRE 


Silently but swiftly she led him by a tortuous 
trail into the heart of the forest where the shadows 
of night still lingered. At last they drew near a 
clearing, as Ulu could tell by the growing light, 
and the woman left the beaten path, leading him 
stealthily to a screen of bushes from which they 
could see across an open space. 

It was a weird spectacle on which Ulu looked 
out. In the center of the open spot, which was 
shaped like a small amphitheater, was a stone altar, 
made by placing a large flat rock on four sup- 
porting stones. On the top of it lay the naked 
body of a child, whose beauty could be seen even 
in the dim light. His hands and feet were bound 
fast, and his head rested on a kind of stone pillow, 
and his hair was the color of the sun, like that of 
the woman who stood by his side. 

In a circle about the altar were crouched twenty 
or thirty men, black-haired and swarthy, evidently 
waiting with grim patience for some appointed time. 
At the head of the altar, and facing the east, stood 
an old man of striking and terrifying appearance. 
He was taller than any man Ulu had ever seen, 
and a great white beard fell below his waist. In his 
uplifted right hand he held a great stone knife, 
which he waved above the child’s head, while he 
chanted a weird song with a refrain in which the 
watchers joined. When the knife came near the 
child’s throat, the grip of the woman on Ulu’s 
arm seemed to cut into his flesh. 

The scene needed no interpreter. The old man 
170 


THE GREAT WATER 

was a priest of the sun ; the child with the flaming 
red hair was to be sacrificed to him as he rose above 
the circle of trees. At the sight the trance into 
which Ulu had been thrown by the strange woman 
lifted, as the mist had risen from the sea the day 
before. ^ The red blood surged from heart to brain. 
A man’s courage came back to him. These were 
men, not spirits, but men more cruel than the red 
men whom Om and his people had slaughtered. 
The fighting spirit of his fathers rose in his breast, 
but it was to be guided by the brain of Ulu the 
cunning. 

The woman had sunk at his feet as one dead, 
all her strange power gone. He looked toward the 
east. There was an hour before sunrise. The child 
should not be sacrificed to the sun. Leaving the 
woman huddled on the ground, he turned and 
swiftly followed the path back to the shore. His 
companions were just rousing when he reached them. 
He told his story as they were devouring the remains 
of their provisions. They needed no urging. The 
giant U1 shook his great head and shoulders like a 
bull about to charge. This was his element, and 
he took command as naturally on land as Ulu did 
on the sea. 

After hiding their boat they swiftly followed 
Ulu. Each carried a bronze axe, short sword, and 
spear. 

They went so swiftly that they reached the clear- 
ing in the wood before the sun had risen above 
the tree tops. They came so quietly that the 
171 


AROUND THE FIRE 


watchers about the altar did not suspect their 
presence. The woman was still huddled upon the 
ground, with her face buried in her hands. The 
aged priest still stood at the head of the altar, 
knife in hand, waiting for the first rays of the 
rising sun to touch the head of the victim. The 
look of the priest and of the men who crouched 
about him was enough to bring terror even to a 
brave heart. The Angwangs were outnumbered 
two to one, but there was no fear in the breast 
of U1 or his companions. 

As stealthily as the great cats of their native 
woods, they crept to the shelter of a clump of 
bushes just behind the priest. The Kelts faced 
the east and were watching intently the slow rising 
of the sun over the tree tops. A yellow shaft shot 
through the trees above their head, still another and 
another, till the trunks above their heads were 
gilded. The priest raised his knife with a frenzied 
gesture and began to chant the death song, in w T hich 
the others joined with savage zest. 

Just as the cruel knife was descending on the 
throat of the doomed child, the spear of Ul, hurled 
with terrific force, pierced the back of the priest, 
its sharp point protruding from his breast. For a 
moment he stood upright, his knife still raised. A 
stream of red blood stained his white beard. The 
cruel blood lust in his face changed to one of anguish 
and amazement, and he fell face down upon the 
altar, bathing the child with his blood. 

The Kelts were brave, but they were over- 
172 


THE GREAT WATER 


whelmed by the suddenness of the attack. In prep- 
aration for the sacrifice they had fasted two days, 
expecting to gorge themselves at the sacrificial feast. 
Their rude stone weapons were no match for the 
bronze weapons of the Saxons. And these yellow- 
haired furies filled them with a superstitious dread. 
Perhaps these were the people of the sun, who was 
angry with them. A few escaped, but most of them 
shared the fate of their priest. 

When the slaughter was over, they turned to the 
altar. The woman had already reached it and 
unbound her child. As she knelt upon the blood- 
soaked stone with her child hugged to her breast, 
the full light of the summer sun streamed down upon 
them, crowning the head of the mother and child with 
gold, and giving a ruddier tint to the blood stains. 

With a tenderness surprising in such a man, U1 
led the woman with her child to the shelter of 
the trees. Then they piled the bodies of the slain 
upon the altar. With a grim humor they placed 
the body of the Druid on top with his bloodless 
face towards the sun. Then they piled dry wood 
about the bodies and burned them as a sacrifice to 
the sun. 

Near by they found the bodies of two stags 
and preparations for a feast, and they ate with 
the appetites of wolves, but U1 gave meat to the 
woman and the child before he touched it himself. 

As the woman fed the child in her arms and a 
smile broke on its face, the mist of madness lifted 
from her, and her tears rained down upon it. Ulu 
173 


AROUND THE FIRE 


looked at her curiously. She was more beautiful 
than he had thought, and he wondered why he had 
been afraid of her. He was a little disappointed 
that when she looked at him she showed no sign of 
remembering him ; and he was a little disappointed 
that she followed U1 as if she had always belonged 
to him, when they returned to the shore. But when 
he saw U1 take up the child and carry it, he con- 
soled himself with the thought that it was better 
not to have a woman and child if one always heard 
the call of the sea and had to spend much time in 
thinking. Then the woman’s hair was very red, 
though it might be beautiful in a way, and if she 
should ever get angry — why, it was just as well 
that big U1 should have her, yes, very much better. 

Gradually they explored the country about them. 
They found a place suitable for a settlement on 
the bank of a river. Occasionally they came upon 
small villages of Kelts with black hair and blue 
eyes, but only rarely did the villagers show any 
desire to fight. The fear of the yellow-haired men 
was upon them. As time went on, they became 
friends, and the Saxons took wives from among 
the Kelts. On the banks of the Tham grew up 
a village where U1 became a great chief, and sons 
and daughters with gold red hair grew up about 
him and a new race was born in the new land. 

But Ulu heard always the voice of the sea. He 
made bigger and bigger boats, covering them at last 
with strips of wood in place of skins, and he took 
longer and longer voyages, with those who, like 
174 


THE GREAT WATER 


himself, loved the toss of the waves beneath them 
and were never happy except when steering where 
men had never been before. 

So Ulu became a seaman, and U1 a pioneer and 
founder of a race in a new land, and it was so 
because the Great One willed it. 


175 


9 


THE STORY OF LUP 
















XIV. THE STORY OF LUP 


HERE grew up in the village of Angwang 



1 a boy whose name was Jut. His parents had 
never done anything to make their names remem- 
bered, so they were soon forgotten. They died 
when Jut was a small boy, and no one knew just 
how he had been able to keep alive. Some of the 
women gave him scraps to eat when there was * 
anything left from their own meals. The men paid 
little attention to him, and bigger and better-fed 
boys treated him with the unthinking cruelty of 
young animals. They jeered at him because he was 
small and mocked his lameness, for one of his legs 
was shorter than the other. They would not let 
him join with them in games which he could play. 
He could not keep up with them on their hunting 
trips, even if they had been willing to have him go. 
Some of the village bullies would throw stones at 
him to see him hobble away. 

So it was that Jut lived a very hard life and 
came more and more to creep off by himself. He 
was that saddest of all creatures, a boy without a 
friend, if we except Saxa, who had often given him 
food and shelter. Very early he learned to set 


179 


AROUND THE FIRE 


traps such as the hunters of the village made, and 
he became so deft in making them and so cunning 
in setting them that he went hungry less and less 
often, and sometimes had a wood hen or a young 
fawn to leave at the hut of Saxa. With more and 
better food he became stronger, and finally, when 
a big boy who had tormented him for years came 
nearer than usual, he was surprised to be caught 
in a grip like that of a young cave bear, and when 
he finally got free and could run out of Jut’s reach, 
he had such a pulpy and battered look that his own 
mother did not know him. After that Jut was 
treated with more respect, but not with more affec- 
tion. He grew more and more bitter, more and 
more lonely. If it had not been for the kind 
Saxa, no tie would have held him to the village. 
As it was, he left the village for long periods, 
but no one noticed his going or his coming. When 
the villagers thought of him, which was not often, 
they said, “ He is an ugly boy and likes to be by 
himself.” But all the time Jut was starving for 
comradeship, and he still haunted the village in 
the hope that he might pick up some crumbs of 
friendship. 

At last, when he was almost a man, he went off, 
planning never to return. He took all his posses- 
sions, and they made a very small load. There were 
his weapons, a skin which served as a pouch by 
day and a blanket at night, and a rude clay dish 
given him by little Senna, the granddaughter of 
Suta, which he cherished more than his best bow, 
180 


THE STORY OF LUP 

because it was the only thing which had ever been 
given to him. It was merely a child s plaything ; 
he could have made a much better one for himself, 
but he guarded it with jealous care and would use 
nothing else. He told himself bitterly that if Senna 
had been as old as the girls who laughed at him 
because he was lame and avoided him, she would 
not have given it to him ; and still he cared for it. 

For days he traveled northward, following the 
winding river till it became a brook. He went 
slowly, for he was lame and his leg pained him 
much. Often he halted, half minded to go back, 
but what was the use? The thing he sought was 
not there. 

One night, as he lay brooding in lonely misery 
by the fire, which he had to keep constantly alight 
to drive away dangerous prowlers, he heard a low, 
whining bark, so low that he thought for a while 
it was far, far away. Then he became curious and 
sat up to listen more carefully. No, it was close 
by. He got up and carefully followed the sound, 
firmly grasping his stone axe in his hands. In a few 
paces he came upon a little wolf cub which had 
been terribly mauled by some animal, perhaps a wild- 
cat. One of its hind legs was helpless and trailed 
after him, and it was too weak to get away, even 
from the lame boy. If Jut had not been so lonely, 
he would have killed the wolf cub without a 
thought. Or it may be that the helpless leg of 
the little beast appealed to some hidden spring of 
sympathy. At any rate, he picked up the cub, care- 


AROUND THE FIRE 

fully avoiding its sharp teeth, and took him back 
to the fire. 

At first the little wolf struggled feebly to get 
away from the terrifying glow*, but Jut held him 
where the warmth reached him and he became more 
quiet. Then, seeing that the creature was almost 
starved, he gave him something to eat. Even in his 
frenzy of hunger the w T olf watched the man cub 
with curious eyes, expecting to have the food 
snatched from him as his brother had done in the 
den, when his mother had brought them food. But 
Jut did not do it. When he had eaten his fill, 
the cub grew very sleepy and the fire was very 
warm, and Jut’s side was a very cosy place to 
nestle against. So the lonely wolf cub and the 
lonely man cub curled up by the fire, and each was 
less lonely because of the other. 

The next morning Jut fed the wolf again and 
carefully bound up the crippled leg, talking to him 
all the time as if he could understand. Little by 
little the wolf found that the boy’s hand was always 
kind and that it gave food. Even though his leg 
ached and his wounds were painful, his stomach was 
full and he was warm, and perhaps he was more 
comfortable than he had ever been in his short life 
before. 

For several days Jut did not change his camp, 
and the pup grew strong with astonishing rapidity. 
One night he chewed off the strips of hide which 
bound his leg and the next morning he walked on 
all fours. Jut lay watching him, expecting him to 
182 


THE STORY OF LUP 


run off into the woods any moment. Sometimes he 
would run away to the stream for a drink or to 
investigate some new noise, but each time he came 
back and crouched on his haunches, watching his 
new friend. Evidently he preferred him to the 
pack with which he had had to fight for every 
morsel of food. That day Jut went on, and Lup 
followed, at first limping like his new master, but 
soon circling about him, going five miles to his one. 
But he rarely wandered beyond the call of Jut; 
when he did, his sharp nose had no difficulty in 
picking up the pungent man-trail. 

And Lup became Jut’s first friend. They hunted 
together. Lup’s nose told him where the game was, 
Jut’s arrow brought it down, and they both shared 
in the kill. It was better than hunting with the 
pack. As they sat about the fire, Jut would talk 
to him as if he had been a man, and Lup liked 
to hear the sound of his voice and would listen with 
winking eye and wagging tail. And Lup learned 
many things by living with the man hunter. He 
learned to wait when he had tracked the game till 
his lame master could come up and shoot it. He 
learned to drive it where his master was waiting, to 
come at his master’s whistle. And Jut taught him 
some things which he would much rather not have 
learned. 

The partnership was good for both. They rarely 
went hungry. Lup was legs to Jut, and Jut was 
hands and brain to Lup. They both thrived. Jut 
found a cave overlooking a lake in a place where 

183 


AROUND THE FIRE 


the game was plentiful and made it his first home. 
Lup shared it with him and grew and grew until 
his master thought he would never stop growing. 
His shoulders were nearly as high as Jut’s hips, 
and he weighed nearly as much as his master. He 
was larger than any wolf Jut had ever seen. Some- 
times he met straggling wolves and he fought them 
impartially. At first he held his own ; then he 
fought to a finish any who dared to challenge 
him. 

One day they had been hunting a deer according 
to their usual fashion. Jut took his place by a 
runway through a gorge, and Lup chased the deer 
toward it. But they were not the only hunters in 
the field. While Jut was intently watching for 
the deer, a cave bear, who had his den in the 
gorge, waked up hungry and came out to forage. 
To his surprise he found game almost in front of 
his den. With marvelous quietness for so big a 
creature, he crept up behind Jut, and was within 
a few feet of him before he was heard. All the 
advantage was with the bear. He had almost 
cornered Jut, who was not much of a runner, and 
a bear, clumsy as he appears, can be wonderfully 
swift in his movements. Jut was already too ex- 
perienced a hunter not to know that his chances 
of escape were few; still, with the blind instinct of 
self-preservation, he shot his arrow at the approach- 
ing bear and climbed the nearest tree. The arrow 
scarcely pricked the tough hide of the bear, who 
. was so close to Jut that his great claw tore one 
184 


THE STORY OF LUP 


of the man’s legs as he dragged himself out of reach 
for a moment. 

The bear was prepared to climb the tree, if neces- 
sary, but he was in no hurry. He tore the trunk 
of the tree with his teeth, and then stretched up 
to his full length and scratched off great strips of 
bark with his cruel claws. Next he hugged the 
tree, which seemed smaller every moment to Jut, 
and shook it with terrifying fury. Finally the bear, 
tired of the joys of anticipation, started to climb 
the tree, and Jut knew that there was no hope. 
Just at that moment the wild hunting cry of a 
wolf echoed through the gorge, and a deer rushed 
by. It attracted the attention of the bear, who 
slipped down the trunk of the tree to see what was 
going on. For a moment the wolf and the bear 
confronted each other with curiosity. For ages 
there had been a kind of truce between the two. 
Neither found the other satisfactory game. 

When he saw Lup, Jut gave a shrill whistle by 
which he was accustomed to call him, and the wolf 
looked up and saw his master in the tree above 
him. The old instinct to let the bear alone held 
him back; the new habit of obedience to the call 
of Jut pulled him forward, strengthened by the 
love for the man who had been his friend. The 
new habit and the new affection won. With a 
savage snarl he dashed at the bear’s haunches, dart- 
ing aside to avoid the terrible swing of the paw. 
Round and round they spun, the surprised bear 
growing angrier every moment. By degrees Lup 

185 


AROUND THE FIRE 


drew the bear away from the foot of the tree. As 
nimble as a monkey, Jut slipped down the tree and 
recovered his weapons which he had dropped. He 
could easily have escaped, leaving Lup to take his 
chances, but no thought of it entered his mind when 
he saw that the bear had driven Lup into a crevasse 
from which he could not escape without coming 
within reach of the deadly paws. Lup had stood 
by the man ; he would stand by Lup. 

Stealing up behind the bear, whose sole atten- 
tion was now given to the wolf, Jut thrust his 
long bronze knife into his side, just behind the ribs, 
leaping back to avoid the swing of the maddened 
beast. With a roar of pain, the bear rushed at Jut. 
Lup slashed his quarters with his knife-like teeth. 
As the bear turned on the wolf, Jut struck him a 
terrible blow with his bronze axe, cutting a great 
gash in his shoulder and partly crippling him. Back 
and forth, round and round the strange battle waged. 
Sometimes the bear seemed to be getting the best of 
it; once Lup ventured too near, and one of the 
flying paws ripped his flank from shoulder to thigh. 
Jut also had his leg terribly torn. But it was two 
to one. The bear grew weak from loss of blood. 
More and more often the sharp axe slashed him. 
At last, as he reared high to plunge at Lup, Jut 
severed one of the great tendons in his hind leg. 
The bear toppled over on his side, no longer able 
to make his terrible rushes. Then Jut waited for 
his opportunity and drove his spear to the bear’s 
heart, and the great fight was over. 

1 86 


THE STORY OF LUP 


After the frenzy of battle, the victors became 
conscious of their own wounds. Jut felt faint 
from loss of blood, and Lup crept up to him, 
whining dismally and licking his dripping flank. 
With the skill which men learned quickly in the 
time when wounds were every-day affairs, Jut 
dressed the wounds, taking as much care with Lup’s 
as he did with his own, and the wolf licked the 
man’s hand with low whines of gratitude. From 
that day they were blood brothers. 

At the season of the year when the wolves run 
in pairs, Lup grew restless. Sometimes in the 
dead of night the strange mating call of the wolf 
bitch could be heard in the distance, and Lup would 
lift his nose high in the air and give an answering 
call which made the surrounding hills echo. One 
night he slipped away, disobeying the call of his 
master, and was gone for two days. Jut thought 
he had gone for good, and began to realize what 
Lup had meant to him. He was able to kill very 
little game alone, and he was more lonely than 
he had ever been in his life before. 

But on the morning of the third day he heard 
with delight Lup’s shrill bark, and the big gray 
wolf trotted up the path to the cave, waving his 
brush proudly and turning every few yards to look 
behind him. Jut saw nothing and eagerly called 
him, but Lup paid no heed and finally turned and 
went out of sight. Again he appeared, barking 
sharply, but clearly with friendly intent. This time 
there trotted, a few yards behind him, a wolf bitch 

187 


AROUND THE FIRE 


only a little smaller than himself. She was very 
suspicious and turned tail again and again and 
returned to the bush. But each time Lup coaxed 
her back until at last she came near enough for 
Jut to toss her an inviting bone. 

By degrees she grew wonted to the man friend 
of Lup, and ate with them and hunted with them, 
but she never would sleep in the cave with the 
man. By and by she found a small den not far 
from the cave, in a spot which Jut could not 
reach. Then she stopped hunting, and Lup. hunted 
for her and would even take the bones which Jut 
gave him to the den of his mate. After several 
weeks Lup and his mate came to the cave, followed 
by two round rolling pups. The pups were sus- 
picious at first, but soon found the man friend very 
good company. He gave them even better morsels 
to eat than their mother, and he knew how to scratch 
their heads and sides in a way that felt uncom- 
monly good. 

So Lup became the friend of Jut and the father 
of those who in every land and age came to share 
man’s work, his pleasure, and his pain. 


1 88 


THE WOOING OF SENNA 






















. 




























































































































































































































































































« 




































« 













XV. THE WOOING OF SENNA 

F OR a number of years Jut lived by himself, 
seeking no other company than that of his 
family of wolf dogs, and he grew to be a powerful 
man, even though he was lame. He had plenty to 
eat, and in his caves were the finest skins. No one 
had finer weapons than he or knew how to use them 
more skillfully. He was rich, according to the 
standards of his time, and yet he was not satisfied. 
Even the comradeship of Lup and his descendants 
did not satisfy his craving for friends. By and by 
the desire to see those of his own kind became so 
strong that he began to extend his hunting trips 
more and more in the direction of Angwang. Some- 
times he caught a glimpse of the villagers from some 
hilltop. The villagers soon found traces of the 
hunting of Jut and his four-footed followers. They 
found the trail of a pack of wolves mingled with 
that of a man. When that had happened before, 
the trail of the man ended, but here they found the 
trails mingled day after day. So they told tales 
of the wolf man, which grew with the telling and 
made the children afraid to go far from the village. 
One hunter went so far as to say that he had seen 
the wolf man hunting with the pack and that he 
191 


AROUND THE FIRE 

went on all fours and had hair all over him like 
a wolf. 

One day, as Jut was hunting nearer the village 
than usual, the pack treed something. As he ap- 
proached the tree which they surrounded, he noticed 
that their cry had a curious note of uncertainty such 
as he had never heard except when they had hap- 
pened to meet with some of their own wild cousins. 
But a wolf could not climb a tree. What could it 
be? When he was near enough, he saw Lup stand- 
ing at the trunk, looking up into the branches and 
barking sharply, but wagging his tail at the same 
time and looking back over his shoulder now and 
then, as if to assure the pack that this was something 
different from ordinary game. 

When Jut reached him, the big wolf dog stopped 
barking and looked up at his master inquiringly. 
And this was what Jut saw. Crouching among the 
branches and looking down on him with frightened 
eyes, was a young woman. For a moment he stared 
at her with open eyes and open-mouthed astonish- 
ment. Then he knew who she was. This was 
Senna, a granddaughter of Suta. He remembered 
how kind she had been to him as a boy, but he had 
not expected that she would be so beautiful, and 
he had almost forgotten how to talk to his own 
kind, so he simply stared and stared. 

But Senna’s face changed its expression very 
rapidly from fright and wonder to friendly self- 
possession, and she was the first to speak. “ Why, 
you are Jut! Why doesn’t the big wolf bite you? 
192 


THE WOOING OF SENNA 


Where have you been? How big you have grown! 
I should not have known you if it had not been 
for your lame leg — and your eyes! ” Jut answered 
never a word, only stared and stared, but Senna 
did not seem to be at all offended and talked on. 
“ Oh, I know, you are the wolf man : tell me, did 
the Great One teach you how to make the wolf 
hunt for you and obey you ? ” Still not speaking, 
Jut whistled for Lup, who came up to him and 
wagged his tail, while his master stroked his head. 
A new light came into the girl’s face as she looked 
at the two: “ Oh, it must be wonderful to have the 
Great One tell you a secret. He has spoken to no 
one of our tribe for a long time, and my grand- 
mother Suta said that it .might be because the 
villagers had not been kind to you when you were 
a boy.” 

At last Jut broke his long silence, and what he 
said might have seemed to an outsider not quite 
to the point, though Senna did not seem to notice 
it. “ I have the little clay dish you made me and 

drink out of it every day.” And Senna did not 

seem to be displeased, for she said, “If your big 
gray wolves will not eat me, I will come down 
so that we can talk better.” From which it will 
be seen that Senna had the kind heart of her 
grandmother Suta and the busy tongue of her 
grandfather Wang. And Jut, the silent, thought 
the music of the girl’s voice sweeter than that of 

the woodland songsters. All he asked was a long, 

long time to listen. And Senna seemed to be de- 
193 


AROUND THE FIRE 


lighted to have so appreciative an audience, for, if 
the truth must be told, even her grandmother some- 
times tired of her chatter, and Wang found that 
she interfered with his own extended monologues. 

So Senna slipped down the tree, and the great 
dogs sniffed at her curiously but with approval and 
lay down about the two in a circle, as if to assure 
them that all was well. And Senna sat on a moss 
cushion with Jut at her feet and talked and talked 
to her heart’s content, while Jut listened with a 
growing light in his eyes and a glow at his heart. 
The girl told him all the news of the village and 
drew from him his own story bit by bit. 

Jut was lame, but to Senna he was the most 
■wonderful man she had ever seen. There was no 
young man in the village who had a face like 
Jut’s. It had the look of one who has heard the 
voice of the Revealer and could never be like other 
men’s. And there was no man in the village with 
a body so powerful and symmetrical as his. What 
mattered a lame leg? It simply made him different. 
And to Jut the girl seemed to give tangible shape 
to all the vague beauty of the world which he had 
only dimly sensed before. He looked up into the 
blue sky with its glory of sun-kissed clouds and out 
upon the shimmering waters of the river and on to 
the blue hills beyond. How beautiful they were! 
Senna was more beautiful than any or all. But 
Jut could not say these things with his tongue. For- 
tunately for him, his face was eloquent, and Senna, 
looking into it, could read his thoughts. 

194 


THE WOOING OF SENNA 

As the evening shadow began to fall, the girl 
leaped to her feet. “ Now I must go to the vil- 
lage and you must come with me.” As Jut hesi- 
tated, she said, “ Don’t you know that one to whom 
the Great One has spoken is afraid of no one?” 
“ But I am afraid of you,” answered Jut. “ Oh, 
that is different. Come with me.” So Jut followed 
her, and her words put a new spirit in him, and as 
they entered the village he bore himself like a 
chief, and Senna looked at him with eyes shining 
with pride. 

As they entered Angwang, the villagers were too 
astonished to speak. Senna walked proudly by the 
side of a strange chief, though he seemed of their 
own race. He was lame, but his weapons and every 
line of his powerful body showed him to be a mighty 
hunter. But at the sight of the great gray wolves 
trotting quietly behind him and obeying not merely 
his voice but the wave of his hand, awe and fear were 
added to their wonder. As Jut looked about him, 
he recognized some of his boyhood tormentors. He 
raised his head more proudly. Lame though he was, 
there was not one who would dare withstand him. 
And Senna led him to the home of Om, the chief. 

“ This,” said she, “ is Jut, to whom the Revealer 
has shown the heart of the wolf. See, they obey 
him as the tribesmen obey their chief.” 

At a .sign from Jut the wolf dogs crouched at 
his feet, waiting his commands with blinking eyes 
and wagging tails. Om looked at him in silent 
amazement for a moment and then led him into the 
195 


AROUND THE FIRE 


hut to the side of Oma, the aged wise-woman. 
She was blind, but could still hear. “ Mother, the 
Keeper of Secrets has spoken again. He has spoken 
to Jut, the bov whom no one cared for and who 
fled the village. Behind him come six wolves who 
do his bidding as I have done yours. He has taken 
the wolf heart out of them and put in its place 
the heart of a man.” 

With the help of Om, Oma rose to her feet and 
stretched out her hand toward the young man. 
When he came within her reach, she placed her 
hand on his head and then, with the seeing touch 
of the blind, moved her hand over his face and 
over his great muscles. Then she spoke: 

“ My heart has been heavy within me because 
the Great One was so long silent. I said in my 
heart, ‘ He is angry with the men of Angwang 
and has gone to the country beyond the sunsetting.’ 
But now I know that when men listen he speaks. 
Let Jut be second only to Om, for now the Re- 
vealer has come back to Angwang.” 

That night Om brought Jut to the council fire, and 
he sat among the great ones, while Om told his story. 
And if there had been any ready to doubt it, there 
were the great dogs by the fire ready to prove it. 

And Jut took Senna , to his own cave, and she 
never lacked a willing listener. For when Jut was 
away, the old gray wolf who stayed to guard her 
would listen with comprehending eye. And what 
more does any eager talker want? 


196 


HUN, HUNTER OF WHITE MEN 











XVI. HUN, HUNTER OF WHITE 
MEN 


ND Senna, wife of Jut, tamer of the wolf, 



ii bore many sons and daughters. The first-born 
was named Senn, and he had many strange adven- 
tures, for he was one of those not content to do as 
the fathers had done. Even as a boy he loved to 
wander farther than the other boys dared to go. 
His mother was very anxious about him, and well 
she might be, for the woods were not a very safe 
playground. But his father said : “ He has the eye 
of the seeker for new things. The Revealer will 
watch over him.” So Senn roamed farther and 
farther, and wherever he went he was followed by 
a big wolf dog, Can, grandson of Lup, and the 
boy with the passion for wandering was saved, even 
more than he knew, by the quick ear, keen scent, 
and courage of his dog friend. 

Senn sometimes took other boys with him, but 
more often he went alone, because they were afraid 
to go where he wanted to go. And there seemed to 
be no end to his hunger to explore the unknown. 
Just as Ulu and U1 had always heard the call of 
the sea and the West, he heard the call of the 
woods and the East. He never was so happy as 


199 


AROUND THE FIRE 


when pushing his way through trackless forests 
or following trails made by wild beasts. When he 
was in the village, he was always restless, and his 
eyes seemed to look for something he could not 
find. 

Now in the village of Angwang there was an 
old man who was honored by all, but especially 
beloved by the children. His name was Sagg, and he 
was a cripple, so that he could not hunt with the 
men of the tribe, but he had a wonderful memory 
and a cunning tongue. He had stored up in his mind 
the stories of the adventures of Ang and Sut and 
the other great men of the tribe. He had listened 
to the tales which Ulma had told of the land to the 
east and south from which she had been stolen by 
the red men, a land where men built huts on the 
waters of lakes, like beavers, and lived in constant 
fear of the red men. 

In the long winter evenings, when the Angwangs 
hugged the fire, Sagg told the stories over and over 
again, but no one tired of them. Sometimes he 
would sing them in a monotonous chant, with a 
chorus in which they all joined. On feast days 
some of the young men would act the adventures 
which he described. No one listened like Senn, and 
Sagg, who, like Senna, loved a good listener, told 
him more stories and stirred his imagination and 
love of wandering. 

To the surprise of all the wise ones of the village 
Senn grew to man’s size and strength. He had 
had many hair-breadth escapes and had many scars 
200 


THE HUNTER OF WHITE MEN 


to remind him of them, but he was sound and fit 
for anything, which was fortunate, as we shall 
see. 

Finally he tired of trips which always ended in 
a return to the village, and he decided to take his 
two wolf dogs, sons of Can, and his finest weapons, 
and visit the people of Ulma, the Lake Dwellers. 
All that Ulma had known or that Sagg could tell 
him was that they lived far to the south and east, 
on lakes which had great mountains about them, 
mountains whose tops were lost in the clouds. That 
they lived in constant dread of the red men and 
savage beasts he also knew, but cared not, for Senn 
was one of those whom danger draws, as food the 
hungry man. 

When he left the village, equipped for his long 
and perilous journey with his two great dogs be- 
hind him. it was so early that no one was stirring 
but the old story-teller, Sagg. Though he had 
fanned the boy’s smoldering ambition to flame, he 
now dreaded to have him go and tried to persuade 
him to stay, reminding him of all the dangers which 
he knew and inventing more for the occasion, but 
all to no purpose. 

For five days Senn journeyed over ground which 
he had been over before. It was wild and dan- 
gerous enough, but more or less familiar. On the 
sixth day he came to a river broader than any he 
had ever seen before. On the southern horizon 
he saw for the first time the outline of the great 
mountains whose tops were lost in the clouds. 

201 


AROUND THE FIRE 

Under them must be the dwellings of the people 
of Ulma. 

Though the river was broad and deep, Senn did 
not hesitate. He found a dry log on the shore 
and lashed his weapons to it, and then pushed it 
out into the stream, swimming behind it. For a 
moment the dogs, Chen and Chut, whined and 
shivered on the bank, but, seeing their master push- 
ing steadily out into the stream, they leaped in and 
followed him. 

Though man and dogs were powerful swimmers, 
the strong current swept them more rapidly down 
the stream than they were able to swim across it. 
Before they had much more than reached mid- 
stream they had been carried around a bend in the 
river. Here the river suddenly narrowed between 
high and rugged banks and became a roaring, foam- 
ing rapid. Senn felt the pull of the rushing water 
almost as soon as he saw its white foam. For a 
few moments he tried to struggle against it, but soon 
saw that it was useless. The only thing for him to 
do was to drift through the rapids in the wake of 
the log on which his weapons were lashed, hoping 
that it would protect him from the rocks. 

Just as he was entering the rapids he turned to 
call his dogs, and saw just behind him another 
swimmer with such a look of terror on his face 
as he had never seen before, and it needed but a 
glance to see why. Just behind him the two great 
wolf dogs were converging on him and in a few 
strokes would be on top of him. Before him were 
202 


THE HUNTER OF WHITE MEN 


the rapids. In the man’s mouth was a long knife. 
With that wonderful power of noting details so 
often possessed by those in great peril, he saw that 
the man’s mouth was cut from gripping the knife 
too tightly in his fright. Evidently the man had 
followed him, not noticing the dogs, expecting to 
take him by surprise. 

At that instant the rapids swallowed him up. 
Mouth and nose and eyes were filled with water 
and flying spume. He was enveloped in noises 
more thunderous than a hundred storms. He was 
tossed about like a dry twig, out of the water, be- 
neath it, gasping, struggling, but holding to his log 
with the blind instinct of self-preservation. Soon he 
lost all consciousness of where he was and what 
was happening to him, but his mind rushed back 
over the details of his past life, finding no detail 
too small. Then came blackness, a sense of falling 
out of the world into space, and then a blessed still- 
ness, like the sleep of childhood. 

When he slowly came back to consciousness, he 
was not sure but that he had passed to the spirit 
world, all was so still. Slowly and painfully *he 
opened his eyes. There was the blue sky above him 
with its flocks of white-winged clouds. Perhaps — 
But he was too tired to look and see. Then the 
sound of a low whine penetrated his ear, and he 
dimly felt the scraping of a hot tongue on his face. 
With great effort he opened his hand and closed it 
on wet sand. Little by little he came back to his 
world and himself. He turned over and propped 
203 


AROUND THE FIRE 


his head on his arm and looked about him. He lay 
on a sand beach, with his feet in the water. On 
either side of him crouched Chen and Chut, bat- 
tered and bleeding, but very much alive and anxiously 
licking his face and hands. 

With the unsteadiness of a drunken man rousing 
from a stupor he sat up and looked about him. 
Though all was quiet near him, he could still hear 
the roar of the rapids in the distance. Then he 
remembered. He had come through the mad water 
alive. Odin must love him, for he had saved him 
from the cruel spirits of the river. And the other 
man ? At the thought he staggered to his feet. 
A little below him he saw the log which had been 
his lifeboat slowly drifting by the shore. Painfully 
he crawled after it, and when he reached it, found 
to his delight that his weapons were still lashed to 
it. Their possession seemed to make him a man 
again instead of a snail. The blood began to flow 
and warmed his chilled body. Courage came back 
to him and with it a consuming hunger. Higher up 
on the bank some wild berries attracted him, and 
he climbed up and ate greedily, growing hungrier 
with every mouthful. 

As he was trying in vain to satisfy his hunger, 
his attention was drawn to a small island of rocks 
some twenty feet from the shore and lying partly 
in the water and partly on a shelving rock — what 
was it — a log or a man ? He rubbed his eyes and 
looked more carefully. It was the body of a man, 
probably the man who had followed him into the 
204 


THE HUNTER OF WHITE MEN 


rapids. He must be dead ; let him lie until the 
vultures or fishes picked his bones. But if he should 
come back to life as he had done? Was it safe to 
have such an enemy following him? 

Taking his bronze axe, he went down to the 
shore and waded out to the rocks. The body lay 
with the head just raised above the level of the 
water. The face was like bronze in color, the hair 
straight and black, and the mouth was bloody. Yes, 
it was the man who had planned to stab him in 
the back as he swam. He must be dead, but he 
would take no chances. As he raised his axe to 
strike, something seemed to hold his hand. To kill 
a man in fair fight was one thing. If Odin had 
spared his life, why should Senn take it? 

At that moment the man groaned and opened his 
eyes. Something in their look or it may be some- 
thing in his own heart changed Senn’s purpose. Won- 
dering why he did it, he drew the battered and half- 
drowned man out on the rocks. He was bleeding 
to death from a terrible wound in the leg, and Senn 
^stopped the flow of blood by binding tightly about 
it a strip of hide. After a while the man revived and 
looked with wonder and fear at the man who bent 
over him. Then, seeing what had been done for 
him, the fear gave way to a larger wonder. That 
the man whom he had tried to kill should be tend- 
ing him and saving his life seemed at first too 
strange to be believed, but as Senn continued to 
bind up his wounds, there could be no mistake, and 
a new look came into his eyes — a look like that 
205 


AROUND THE FIRE 


which the great dogs gave their master when he 
caressed them, a look strangely out of place on his 
rugged face. Seeing it, Senn knew that he had 
made a friend out of a murderous enemy. 

When Senn had finished dressing the red man’s 
wounds, his own empty stomach began to cry for 
food. The problem was, what to do with the 
one who plainly could not do for himself. He must 
get him to the shore and then hunt for food. With 
great difficulty Senn dragged the man, who was very 
large, into the water, and half carried, half towed 
him to the shore. Finding a sheltered place, he made 
him as comfortable as possible under the circum- 
stances, took up his weapons, and called the dogs. 

Just as he was going, the man beckoned to him 
and asked for a knife, by easily understood signs. 
For a moment Senn hesitated. Why give a knife 
to a man who had attempted his life, and yet he 
knew what it meant to be left alone in the woods 
of that age without a weapon for defence. So he 
gave it to him. The man seized it with a look of 
gratitude which was like the breaking of sunlight 
through a black cloud, and Senn was glad that he 
had not hesitated to give it. .When he came to reason 
about it later, he knew that his instinct was right. 
If the red man was to be with him even for a short 
time, he must be a friend, not an enemy, and if a 
friend he must be armed, so that he could play a 
man’s part. 

Senn himself was faint from hunger, and Chen 
and Chut were wasp-stomached. The woods were 
206 


THE HUNTER OF WHITE MEN 


full of small game, which he could have shot if 
his bow string had been dry. He might starve be- 
fore he could catch anything in traps. His only 
hope was to find a deer runway, and spear one 
as his dogs drove it past. He had not gone very far 
before he found a path leading down to the river 
bank showing the fresh tracks of deer and other 
animals. Taking his place in a thicket hard by the 
path and so located that his scent would not be 
carried to any animals that came that way, he sig- 
naled to the dogs to beat up the game, beginning 
with the river. 

It was not long before he heard the cry of the 
dogs and then a chorus of squealing and grunting 
which came nearer every moment. He did not need 
to be told that it was a herd of wild hogs. For 
a moment he hesitated. The wild boar was one 
of the most dangerous and most dreaded animals of 
the wild. Hunters rarely ventured to attack them 
alone, and even when they hunted them in groups, 
with every possible advantage on their side, some 
unlucky hunter was very likely to pay the death 
penalty. But hunger made Senn desperate, and he 
held his ground. 

In a moment the herd was on him. The first one 
to come abreast of his ambush was a young sow, 
and he thrust his javelin into its side with all his 
might. Then he dashed away, hoping to avoid the 
rush of those which followed, but he was not quick 
enough. A savage old tusker caught sight of him 
and charged with incredible speed and fury. The 
207 


AROUND THE FIRE 


dogs were at some distance and had troubles of 
their own, so his only hope was to reach the river 
and dash in, as the boar has an unaccountable aver- 
sion to water. 

He tore through the brush at top speed, but the 
boar gained on him at every leap. Still he would 
have reached the water safely if he had not tripped 
on a vine just at the river bank. As he fell, the 
boar rushed oVer him and he felt his hot breath 
as he passed. With a squeal of fury the boar 
wheeled to rip up his fallen enemy with his tusks, 
which were as long and sharp as knives. Senn had 
no hope, but tried to roll to one side. He was 
so near the edge of the bank that he slid over and 
fell several feet, the boar falling almost on top of 
him. For a moment he was stunned by the fall. 
When he came to himself, the boar lay beside him 
in his death agony, the blood spouting from a great 
gash just over his heart. The red man knelt be- 
side him with the dripping knife in his hand and 
with a look of savage satisfaction on his face. He 
had paid his debt to the white man. 

When Senn looked about him, he saw that they 
had fallen almost on top of the red man’s resting 
place. With the instinct of his people, he saw 
something more in it than chance, and lifting his 
face to the sky, he said : “ O Great One, Thou hast 
twice held the hand of the spinner who would have 
cut the thread of my life. If it is that I may do 
some great thing, show it to me ! ” 

And the red man, seeing that he prayed, bowed 

208 


THE HUNTER OF WHITE MEN 

his head also, and said something in a language 
which Senn could not understand. Then they lit 
a fire, Senn gathering dry moss and sticks and the 
red men in lighting it, rubbed two willow sticks in 
a way that Senn had never seen before. The men 
and dogs feasted. They ate as if they never ex- 
pected to be able to eat again. 

That night they lay in a sheltered place under 
the bank, watched over by the two dogs. It did not 
take long to recover from his wounds and exhaustion 
in the days when man was young, and Senn woke 
to find himself nearly as strong as ever. But it 
would be a few days before the red man could walk 
far. As Senn pondered what he should do, the red 
man, who seemed to read his thoughts, made eager 
signs to him. He pointed to his leg, and then held 
up two fingers to the sun and made the sign of 
walking. In two days he could go on. Then he 
pointed to the dogs and to himself, then he took 
Senn’s hand and laid it first on his bowed head and 
then on his heart. He would follow Senn like the 
dogs and be as obedient and faithful. Though Senn 
had something of the instinctive aversion of his race 
to the red man, he still wanted a companion in his 
venture. Then he remembered the story of Rang. 
Perhaps this man was like Rang. He would make 
him a blood brother, according to the custom of his 
people. 

So Senn took a small flint knife from his belt 
and scraped the flesh of his arm till it bled a little. 
Then he took the arm of the red man and did the 
209 


AROUND THE FIRE 


same. Next he mingled the blood of the red man 
with his own in the palm of his left hand. “ Now,” 
said he, raising his right hand to the sky, “ we are 
brothers: One blood, one life. Let Odin bear 
witness.” 

Though the red man did not understand the 
words, he did understand the meaning of the blood 
rite and raised his right hand to the sky in assent. 
Then he pointed to himself and said, “ Hun,” and 
Senn knew that it was the name of his new brother. 


THE LAKE DWELLERS 



A 77 \ 1 > 












XVII. THE LAKE DWELLERS 


FTER two days Hun was well enough to take 



JL the trail again, and Senn tried to tell him 
by signs what it was he sought. He took him to 
the river’s edge and made a rough hut on sticks 
driven in the shallow water; then he pointed ques- 
tioningly to the south and east. For some time Hun 
studied it without looking at Senn, who wondered 
whether he understood, but finally he turned and 
nodded his head in assent ; then he made Senn 
understand by signs that he had seen the lake 
dwellings and that he could lead him to them. 
It was not till later that Senn knew that Hun had 
understood him from the first and why he had hesi- 
tated to make it known. 

On the morning of the third day they started 
southward, Hun taking the lead. They went by 
ways so different from those which Senn would 
have chosen that he sometimes hesitated to follow, 
but when Hun pointed to the scar of brotherhood 
on his arm he felt ashamed of his suspicions. 

On the evening of the eighth day they drew near 
the great mountains, and Senn was filled with awe. 
Their snow-capped peaks reached up into the clouds. 
This must be the home of Odin and his wild hunts- 


213 


AROUND THE FIRE 


men. A distant roar told of a thunder-storm in 
the mountains. Thor must be there with his terrible 
hammer. He felt a new sense of fear. Perhaps 
it was not best for men to come too near to the 
hunting grounds of the Great Ones. As he looked 
at Hun, he saw that he too seemed afraid, but it 
evidently was not of the powers of the mountains. 
He seemed to fear some hidden enemy at every 
bend of the trail, which, as Senn noticed for the 
first time, had been made with human feet. 

After they had reached the top of a hill, which 
they had climbed with more than usual caution, 
they looked down upon a valley in whose center 
was the most beautiful lake Senn had ever seen, 
while to the south the giant mountains towered 
heavenward. The mountains were still gilded and 
silvered by the light of the setting sun, but the 
shadows had already fallen on the valley. In the 
dim light it was yet possible to see the outline of a 
village perched on piles at the western end of the lake. 

But Senn soon noticed that Hun was not looking 
at the village — he was evidently quite familiar with 
it — but was looking intently up the valley toward 
the east. At last he found what he sought, and, 
laying hold of Senn’s arm, pointed to an open 
meadow across which shadowy figures were moving. 
Senn remembered the story of Rang and the Red 
Men and knew that they must be men on horse- 
back, and many of them. 

After Senn had watched them for some moments 
in wonder, Hun began to talk excitedly in his own 
214 


THE LAKE DWELLERS 


tongue, a thing which he had not done before, ges- 
ticulating as he spoke. He pointed to the horse- 
men and then to himself. Then he imitated the 
motions of a man on horseback, and Senn knew 
that these must be Hun’s people. When Hun 
pointed to the lake village and then went through 
the motions of stabbing and slashing with his knife, 
he understood the situation as well as if Hun’s 
language had been his. Hun’s people were about to 
make a raid on the village on the lake. Unless 
the villagers were warned in time, the old story 
of plunder and murder would be repeated, and the 
red men would carry off many maidens as Ulma had 
been carried away in the days of Rang. 

These villagers, thought Senn, are the people of 
Ulma and so my people. I have been sent by the 
All Seer to warn them, but what of Hun ? Would 
he stand with him or his own people? By signs 
he questioned Hun. He was going to the village. 
Would Hun go with him or to his tribe? But 
Hun had evidently made his decision before. He 
pointed to the scar of blood brotherhood on his 
arm and of the scarcely healed wound on his leg, 
and without a word started down the hill-side 
toward the village. 

It was nearly dark by this time, and as Senn 
stumbled along, he realized that he never could have 
found his way to the village alone in the dark. 
After what seemed hours of aimless wandering in 
trackless woods, they came out upon the shore of 
the lake near the village. Clearly the lake dwellers 
215 


AROUND THE FIRE 


had no suspicion of danger. All was quiet. They 
had not even taken the precaution to pull in the 
draw which connected a slender bridge with the 
land. A solitary watchman dozed over the railing. 
Evidently he considered his duty a mere matter 
of form. 

Senn hesitated for a moment how to make his 
presence and friendly intention known ; then he 
turned to Hun for a suggestion as he had got in the 
habit of doing, but the red man had gone without 
a sound, leaving him alone. Cautiously approaching 
the bridge, he whistled softly and then louder, but 
the sentinel still dozed. Some one had heard, how- 
ever, for he heard footsteps on the bridge. Soon 
there appeared from the shadows the figure of a 
girl, who came rapidly on, paying no attention to 
the sleeping watchman. Evidently she thought the 
whistle a signal from some one she knew. When 
she came to the draw and saw no one, she hesi- 
tated, and Senn softly whistled again and slowly 
approached. When he was near enough so that 
the girl could see that he was a stranger, she gave 
a suppressed cry and started to run back, but not 
before she had seen that Senn had thrown his spear 
on the ground and was making the sign of peace. 
Perhaps she noted also that Senn was young and like 
her own people, though bigger and more powerful. 

Having run a few steps with the apparent inten- 
tion of waking the sentinel, she seemed to think 
better of it and turned and looked again at Senn, 
who had come still nearer. She did not seem to 
216 


THE LAKE DWELLERS 


be as much frightened as before, and this time only 
took a step in retreat before turning again and 
challenging him with questioning eyes. ' As for Senn, 
he forgot for the moment his errand. So Ulma must 
have looked in the time of his grandfathers, only 
not so beautiful. Then he remembered, and spoke 
to her in his own language, using only the shortest 
words and speaking very slowly. The look of grow- 
ing terror in her face showed that she knew what 
danger threatened them. 

Beckoning to Senn to follow her, she fled from 
the bridge, waking the watchman as she passed with 
two words which sounded to Senn like the name of 
the red men in his own language, and which startled 
him into instant action as if he had been struck 
with a whip. As Senn followed the girl, he heard 
the creaking of the slender draw as it was being 
hastily pulled in, and the whining of Chen and 
Chut, who. had been left behind. More than once 
he nearly fell in his attempt to keep up with the 
young girl in her rapid retreat. After several turns 
she brought him to the entrance of the largest hut 
in the village, and, giving a shrill call, pulled him 
through a door so low and narrow that the young 
giant had great difficulty in crowding in. 

If he had had time to think, he would have hesi- 
tated to call on a strange chief in such uncere- 
monious manner, for in those days the man who 
came suddenly was counted an enemy, but the girl 
gave him no time, and she had the way of one who 
has always been obeyed. After his eyes had become 
217 


AROUND THE FIRE 


wonted to the dim light of the interior, which was 
furnished by a single flickering torch, he saw an 
old man seated on a rush mat. His legs were 
crumpled under him and evidently useless, and his 
back terribly hunched, so that it seemed almost as 
if the man had been crushed into the position he 
was in by some great weight falling upon him. 
He was a cripple and such a cripple as rarely sur- 
vived in the grim conditions of the long ago. But 
the head was massive and finely formed and the 
face that of a ruler of men. Here was a man who 
had ruled by the power of his brain and not by the 
power of his hand. Though he was a crippled 
dwarf, Senn did not need to be told that he was 
a chief and the girl his daughter. He was old 
and she young. He was a cripple, she splendid in 
her supple strength, but there were the same lines 
of strength in the faces of both. 

Hurriedly the girl told her story, the old chief 
looking first at her and then at the young man 
behind her. Senn noted that his face, notwith- 
standing his surprise and the terrible tidings which 
his daughter was bringing him, never lost its com- 
posure. When the girl had finished, he gave her 
a few hurried commands and sent her out to arouse 
the village, and then he turned to Senn and looked 
at him with eyes that took note of everything from 
the crown of his head to the soles of his feet and 
seemed to read his most hidden thoughts. Then 
he spoke in words which Senn did not understand, 
but which had a familiar sound, and which, with 
218 


THE LAKE DWELLERS 


the gestures accompanying them, conveyed some 
definite ideas. Senn knew that he was asked to re- 
assert, on his honor as a man and with the fear of 
the gods upon him, that his tidings were true; he 
knew that the old chief wanted to know if he would 
fight with them when the red men came. So Senn 
put his left hand over his heart and raised his right 
to the heavens and called Odin to bear witness that 
he spoke the truth and that he would fight for the 
villagers as if they were his own people. Even 
before the chief ceased speaking to Senn, the village 
about them began to hum like a hive of angry bees. 
Seta was the voice of the girl’s father, and all obeyed 
her as if she had been their queen. When Senn 
joined her at the direction of the chief, she was 
giving orders to put the village in readiness for 
a siege. Following the motion of her hand, Senn 
joined a group of men who were to tear down the 
bridge that connected the village with the shore. 
He had never obeyed a woman’s direction before, 
at least since he was a child, but every one obeyed 
her as if nothing else were possible. 

At first the villagers looked at Senn with some 
suspicion, but when they saw that his great strength 
enabled him to do the work of two men and that 
he did not spare himself, they accepted him as one 
of themselves, and Seta, as she went to and fro, 
carrying the commands of her father, watched the 
labors of the young man with growing approval. 

The men worked with feverish haste, and before 
the first gray of morning the preparations for an 
219 


AROUND THE FIRE 


attack or a siege were complete. The bridge had 
been destroyed, barricades of timber had been placed 
on the shore side of the runways connecting the 
houses, and the walls and roofs of the huts, which 
were covered with rushes, had been soaked with 
water, so that they could not be set on fire by 
burning arrows. 

All through the night there had been no sign of 
the enemy and the villagers grew tired and sus- 
picious. Who was this stranger? Who knew that 
he was not making sport of them? Senn was con- 
scious of many dark and angry looks, and he began 
to wonder what his own fortune would be if the 
red men did not come. Perhaps they were not 
planning to attack the village at all. Then Seta 
would think him a liar, and that troubled him more 
than the angry looks of the men. 

Some of the workers had slipped away to their 
huts when the cry of a wolf, taken up at once by 
his mate, broke the stillness of the shore. Senn 
knew at once that it was the cry of Chen and Chut 
whom he had left behind him on the shore. He 
knew also what the cry meant. It was not the 
hunting cry, but the cry of challenge and warning. 
The red men were coming. He turned to find 
Seta by his side, looking at him with anxious ques- 
tioning. He pointed to the shore, and they listened. 
The baying of the wolf dogs ceased for a moment, 
and they could hear plainly the muffled footsteps 
of many men and horses. Then shadowy figures 
crept out of the woods and made their way to where 
220 


THE LAKE DWELLERS 


the bridge had been. There they stopped, in evident 
perplexity and surprise. No bridge was there, and 
the fierce barking of the dogs disturbed them. They 
hesitated for a few moments and then went back 
into the woods as quietly as they had come. 

But the villagers knew their old enemies too 
well to fancy that this was the end of it. There 
was no more sleep that night, and the morning 
found every one alert. Just at daybreak a band of 
horsemen filed out of the woods and lined up on 
the shore. There were several hundreds of them, 
and a more savage-looking group of men could not 
be imagined. At a signal from their chief they 
charged up and down the shore in front of the vil- 
lage, waving their spears in the air and yelling like 
demons. Sometimes the more daring ones would 
swim their horses to within bow-shot of the village. 
It needed no imagination to picture what would 
have happened if the Huns had found the bridge 
in place, the draw down, and the watchman asleep. 
Even now terror was plainly to be seen, not merely 
in the faces of the women and children, but also 
of the men as well. It was true that they did not 
need to fear starvation, for a net let down from 
a trap door in the middle of their huts would be 
filled with fish. The thatch of their huts was 
soaked so that they could not be set on fire, but one 
never could tell what the savage Huns would do. 

At last the mad warriors tired of their cruel 
game, and a messenger swam his horse out to within 
speaking distance of the village. At a sign from 
221 


AROUND THE FIRE 


Seta four men brought the chief from his hut to 
where he could hear what the messenger had to 
say. And this was the message of the red men: 
“ For longer than the oldest can remember the lake 
dwellers have paid tribute to the red men, for the 
fish eaters cannot stand against the eaters of meat, 
but you have forgotten the ancient custom. We find 
your village closed against us. But do not think 
that you can escape us by tearing down your bridge. 
Give us the ancient tribute, or we will destroy your 
village, kill every man of you, and take your women 
with us.” All this was said, not in words, but in 
signs which no one could mistake. 

At once a group of men gathered about the old 
chief, and Senn could tell by their eager gestures 
that some of them were for yielding to the demands 
of the red men, but he shook his head and pointed 
to Seta with a look that could not be misunderstood. 
She was to be part of the tribute. A sudden frenzy 
seized Senn. Had these men no more courage than 
the fish which they ate? He leaped up in a fury 
of surprise and disgust. Some of the women had 
already begun to pile up on the runways their 
choicest belongings to bribe the red men. Senn 
dashed in among them, sweeping their proposed trib- 
ute aside with his feet and, waving his great axe 
above his head, gave the war-cry of his tribe. In- 
stantly the tide of feeling turned. The timid were 
shamed and the courageous heartened. The face of 
the old chief shone with a new hope. “ The young 
man will do what I would do if it were not for 


222 


THE LAKE DWELLERS 


this broken body. See, he has the strength of Thor, 
and his axe is like the hammer of the thunderer.” 
And Seta saw all that Senn did, and he seemed to 
her as wonderful as the god himself, but she was 
glad that he was not a god, for then — But there 
was no time for thinking. The red men, seeing 
their messenger scorned, were swimming their horses 
toward the village. The women and children hid 
in the huts, and the men crouched behind the logs 
on the runways. 

At the command of Sed, the old chief, they did 
not shoot their arrows till the swimmers were well 
within reach; then they poured a deadly fire on 
them. The bow strings of many of the Huns were 
wet, and they could not shoot to advantage from 
the backs of swimming horses, so they were soon 
compelled to retreat to the shore, leaving some 
of their number to feed the fishes. The villagers 
were wild with delight, thinking that they had 
stood off the red men and that they would not dare 
attack again, but Senn had been with Hun long 
enough to know that the red men were not to 
be stopped as easily as this. He showed Sed that 
the men on the shore were not getting ready to 
retreat but to make a new attack. A fire had swept 
over the lake shore some time before and there 
were many dry logs in the woods. Some men were 
dragging them to the shore with astonishing rapidity, 
while others constructed rude rafts with a shelter 
of logs in front. This time the forces were to be 
more evenly matched. 


223 


AROUND THE FIRE 


Before noon some twenty large rafts had been con- 
structed. This time the villagers must stand off an 
attack from boats manned by twice as many men 
as there were in the village. The besiegers formed 
a half-circle with their rafts and slowly closed in 
on their enemy. The villagers shot their arrows 
as before, but few reached their mark, and the 
rafts came steadily on. Soon the red men were 
almost under the scaffolding which connected the 
huts. Here the villagers had the advantage for 
a moment, for they could shoot down on the be- 
siegers, but in doing so they had to expose them- 
selves. Then the terrible cries of the wounded 
and dying mingled with the war-cries of both red 
men and white. Senn fought with the courage of 
his race, but Sed noted with approval that he did 
not fight blindly. 

With a terrible sweep of his bronze axe, Senn had 
just cleared the railing of an unprotected runway 
of red men, who were clambering over, when a shrill 
call reached his ear above the din of battle. It was 
a cry like that of a great fishhawk to his mate as 
he is about to plunge after his victim. It was the 
call of Hun and it came from high up on the bank. 
He looked up, and there stood Hun on a projecting 
rock, pointing excitedly to something behind Senn. 
Senn turned instantly, but none too soon. The chief 
of the red men with a few of his most daring fol- 
lowers had paddled their raft behind the village, and 
while the villagers were warding off the attack in 
front, had made a safe landing and were dashing 
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THE LAKE DWELLERS 

down a narrow runway to attack them in the 
rear. 

A moment more, and the story of Senn would 
have ended here, but the warning call of Hun had 
given him a chance. With a great cry Senn hurled 
himself at the new enemy, and Seta gave the alarm. 
Fortunately the runway was narrow and only the 
leader could reach him. For a moment the two men 
hailed blows on each other with fury enough to 
have killed a dozen men, but the red man was no 
match for the young giant in an axe duel, and a 
blow like that of Thor himself swept him from 
the narrow bridge into the water. The man behind 
him made a few half-hearted strokes and followed 
his leader. The other men turned and fled, swim- 
ming for their lives, but to no purpose as they were 
easy marks for the village bowmen. 

The death of the leader of the red men and the 
failure of the attack in the rear turned the tide of 
battle, and the besiegers tried to get away from the 
hornet’s nest as best they might. They tried to 
paddle their clumsy rafts to the shore, keeping the 
log bulwarks between them and the villagers’ deadly 
fire. But it was not easily done. A strong wind 
had sprung up, blowing off shore, and many of 
the rafts were blown back into the range of the 
arrows, notwithstanding the frantic efforts of the 
paddlers. Those that reached the shore mounted 
their horses and fled as if they did not mean to 
stop before reaching the sun-rising. And they had 
need to hurry, for the villagers, intoxicated with 
225 


AROUND THE FIRE 


their success, manned their boats and pursued the 
stragglers to the shore, while Senn and some of the 
young men followed the trail of retreat into the 
woods. 

They found there a number of horses whose riders 
had not come back, and they led them in triumph 
to the shore and tied them where all could see. As 
they stood there, Chen and Chut came rushing up 
to their master with loud barks of welcome. For 
a moment all was confusion. Some of the horses 
bolted, and the men plunged into the water and 
started to swim for the village. But when they 
saw that the great wolves did not tear Senn, but 
groveled at his feet, they were astonished beyond 
measure. Perhaps this was one of the huntsmen 
of Odin whom he had sent to be their deliverer. 
Then they bowed themselves before him as if he 
were a god, and though he shook his head, there 
were many who believed that Odin had sent him 
to save the village from the red men. 

The story -of the slaughter of the red men must 
have been told far and wide in the east country, 
for as long as Senn lived, and he lived to be a very 
old man, no red man ever dared to ask tribute of 
the lake dwellers. 

And Senn stayed with the lake dwellers for many 
days and was taught many wonderful things. He 
learned how to make bone needles, how to make a 
hut and thatch it so that the rain would not beat in. 
He learned how to make hooks and nets and to 
catch the most luscious fish. By and by he grew 
226 


THE LAKE DWELLERS 


tired of fish and longed for the old home. So he 
took Seta, daughter of Sed, and brought her to the 
village of Angwang, and they made a hut of tree 
trunks driven in the ground, with a thatched roof. 
And Hun, who could not go back to his own people, 
came and lived in the village, and, like Rang, taught 
the children of the village and especially those of 
Senn and Seta all the wisdom of the red men, so 
that the Angwangs knew more than any other 
tribe, and they grew rich and numerous and became 
a great people. 


227 










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HOW MEN FOUND THE GREAT SPIRIT 


XVIII. HOW MEN FOUND THE 
GREAT SPIRIT 


I N the olden time when woods covered all the earth 
except the deserts and the river bottoms, and men 
lived on the fruits and berries they found and the 
wild animals which they could shoot or snare, when 
they dressed in skins and lived in caves, there was 
little time for thought. But as men grew stronger 
and more cunning and learned how to live together, 
they had more time to think and more mind to think 
with. 

Men had learned many things. They had learned 
that cold weather followed hot, and spring, winter; 
and that the sun got up in the morning and went 
to bed at night. They saw that the great water was 
kindly when the sun shone, but when the sun hid 
its face and the wind blew upon it, it grew black 
and angry and upset their canoes. They had found 
that knocking flints together or rubbing dry sticks 
would light the dry moss, and that the flames which 
would bring back summer in the midst of winter 
and day in the midst of night were hungry and 
must be fed, and when they escaped devoured the 
woods and only the water could stop them. 

These and many other things men learned, but no 

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AROUND THE FIRE 


one knew why it all was or how it came to be. Men 
began to wonder , and that was the beginning of the 
path which led to the Great Spirit. 

In the ages when men began to wonder there was 
born a boy whose name was Wo . 1 As he lay in 
his mother’s arms, she loved him and wondered, 
“ His body is of my body, but whence comes the 
life — the spirit which is like mine and yet not 
like it ? ” And his father, seeing the wonder in the 
mother’s eyes, said, “ Whence came he ? ” And 
there was no one to answer, and so they called him 
Wo to remind them that they knew not whence 
he came. 

As Wo grew up, he was stronger and swifter of 
foot than any of his tribe. He became a mighty 
hunter. He knew the ways of all the wild things 
and could read the signs of the seasons. As he grew 
older, they made him a chief and listened while 
he spoke at the council board, but Wo was not 
satisfied. His name was a question, and questioning 
filled his mind. 

Whence did he come? Whither was he going? 
Why did the sun rise and set? Why did life 
burst into leaf and flower with the coming of the 
spring? Why did the child become a man and the 
man grow old and die? 

The mystery grew upon him as he pondered. In 
the morning he stood on a mountain top and stretch- 
ing out his hands cried, “Whence?”; at night he 
cried to the moon, “ Whither? ” He listened to the 


1 Wo meant, in the language of the time, “ whence. 1 
232 


THE GREAT SPIRIT 


soughing of the wind in the trees and to the song 
of the brook and tried to learn their language. He 
peered eagerly into the eyes of little children and 
tried to read the mystery of life. He listened at the 
still lips of the dead, waiting for them to tell him 
whither they had gone. He went about among his 
fellows silent and absorbed, always looking for the 
unseen and listening for the unspoken. He sat so 
long silent at the council board that the elders ques- 
tioned him. To their questioning he replied like 
one awakening from a dream: 

“ Our fathers since the beginning have trailed the 
beasts of the wood. There is none so cunning as the 
fox, but we can trail him to his lair. Though we 
are weaker than the great bear and buffalo, yet by 
our wisdom we overcome them. The deer is more 
swift of foot, but by craft we overtake him. We 
cannot fly like a bird, but we snare the winged one 
with a hair. We have made ourselves many cun- 
ning inventions by which the beasts, the trees, the 
wind, the water and the fire become our servants. 

“ Then we speak great swelling words : How 
great and wise we are ! There is none like us in 
the air, in the wood, or in the water! But the 
words are false. Our pride is like that of a partridge 
drumming on his log in the wood before the fox 
leaps upon him. Our sight is like that of the mole 
burrowing under the ground. Our wisdom is like 
a drop of dew upon the grass. Our ignorance is like 
the great water which no eye can measure. 

“ Our life is like a bird coming out of the dark, 
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AROUND THE FIRE 


fluttering for a heart-beat in the hut and then going 
forth into the dark again. No one can tell us 
whence it comes or whither it goes. I have asked 
the wise men, and they cannot answer; I have lis- 
tened to the voice of the trees and wind and water, 
but I do not know their tongue; I have questioned 
the sun and the moon and the stars, but they are 
silent. 

“ But to-day, in the silence before the darkness 
gives place to light, I seemed to hear a still small 
voice within my breast, saying to me, ‘ Wo, the 
questioner, rise up like the stag from his lair ; away, 
alone, to the mountain of the sun. There thou shalt 
find that which thou seekest.’ 

“ I go, but if I fall by the trail another will take 
it up. If I find the answer, I will return.” 

Waiting for none, Wo left the council of his tribe 
and went his way toward the mountain of the sun. 
For six days he made his way through the track- 
less woods, guided by the sun by day and the stars 
by night. On the seventh he came to the great 
mountain — the mountain of the sun, on whose 
top, according to the tradition of his tribe, the sun 
rested each night. All day long he climbed, saying 
to himself, “ I will sleep to-night in the hut of the 
sun, and he will tell me whence I come and whither 
I go.” 

But as he climbed, the sun seemed to climb 
higher and higher. As he neared the top, a cold 
cloud settled like a night bird on the mountain. 
Chilled and faint with hunger and fatigue, Wo 
234 


THE GREAT SPIRIT 


struggled on. Just at sunset he reached the top 
of the mountain, but it was not the mountain of 
the sun, for many days’ journey to the west the sun 
was sinking in the Great Water. 

A bitter cry broke from Wo’s parched lips. His 
long trail was useless. There was no answer to his 
questions. The sun journeyed farther and faster 
than men dreamed, and of wood and waste and 
water there was no end. Overcome with misery 
and weakness, he fell upon a bed of moss with his 
back toward the sunset and the unknown. 

And Wo slept, although it was unlike any sleep 
he had ever known before, and as he slept he 
dreamed. He was alone upon the mountain waiting 
for the answer. A cloud covered the mountain, but 
all was silent. A mighty wind rent the cloud 
and rushed roaring through the crags, but there 
was no voice in the wind. Thunder pealed, light- 
ning flashed, but he whom Wo sought was not 
there. 

In the hush that followed the storm, Wo heard 
a voice low and quiet, but in it all the sounds of 
earth and sky seemed to mingle — the song of the 
bird, the whispering of the trees, and the murmur- 
ing of the brook: 

“ Wo, I am He whom thou seekest ; I am the 
Great Spirit;. I am the All-Father. Ever since I 
made man of the dust of the earth and so child 
of the earth and brother to all living, and breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life, thus making him 
my son. I have waited for a seeker who should 
235 


AROUND THE FIRE 


find me. In the fullness of time thou hast come, 
Wo, the questioner, to the Answerer. 

“ Thy body is of the earth and to earth returns ; 
thy spirit is mine; it is given thee for a space to 
make according to thy will ; then it returns to me 
better or worse for thy making. Thou hast found 
me because thy heart was pure and thy search for 
me tireless. Go back to thy tribe and be to them 
the Voice of the Great Spirit. From henceforth 
I will speak to thee and to the seekers that come 
after thee in a thousand voices and appear in a thou- 
sand shapes. I will speak in the voices of the wood 
and streams and of those you love. I will appear to 
you in the sun by day and in the stars by night. 
When thy people and mine are in need and wish 
for the will of the Great Spirit, then shall my spirit 
brood over thine and the words that thou shalt 
speak shall be my words.” 

And Wo awoke, facing the east and the rising 
sun. His body was warmed by its rays. A great 
gladness filled his soul. He had sought and found, 
and prayer came to him like song to the bird: 

“ O Great Spirit, Father of my spirit, the sun 
is Thy messenger, but Thou art brighter than the 
sun. Drive Thou the darkness before me. Be Thou 
the light of my spirit.” 

As Wo went down the mountain and took the 
journey back to the home of his people, his face 
shone, and the light never seemed to leave it, so 
that men called him “ He of the shining face.” 

When Wo came back to his tribe, all who saw 
236 


THE GREAT SPIRIT 


his face knew that he had found the answer, and 
they gathered again about the council fire to hear. As 
Wo stood up and looked into the eager faces in the 
circle of the fire, he remembered that the Great 
Spirit had given him no message and for a moment 
he was dumb. Then the words of the Great Spirit 
came to him again : “ When thy people and mine 
shall need to know my will, my spirit shall brood 
over thine and the words that thou shalt speak shall 
be my words.” Looking into the eager faces full 
of longing and questioning, his spirit moved within 
him and he spoke: 

“ I went, I sought, I found the Great Spirit, who 
dwells in the earth as your spirits dwell in your 
bodies. It is from Him the spirit comes. We are 
His children. He cares for us more than a mother 
for the child at her breast, or the father for the son 
that is his pride. His love is like the air we breathe ; 
it is about us; it Is within us. 

“ The sun is the sign of His brightness, the sky 
of His greatness, and mother-love and father-love 
and the love of man and woman are the signs of His 
love. We are but children ; we cannot enter into 
the council of the Great Chief until we have been 
proved, but this is His will, that we love one an- 
other as He loves us; that we bury forever the 
hatchet of hate ; that no man shall take what is 
not his own and the strong shall help the weak.” 

The chiefs did not wholly understand the words 
of Wo, but they took a hatchet and buried it by the 
fire, saying, “ Thus bury we hate between man and 
237 


AROUND THE FIRE 


his brother,” and they took an acorn and put it in 
the earth, saying, “ Thus plant we the love of the 
strong for the weak.” And it became the custom 
of the tribe that the great council in the spring 
should bury an axe and plant an acorn. 

Every morning the tribe gathered to greet the 
rising sun, and with right hands raised and left 
upon their hearts prayed, “ Great Spirit, hear us ; 
guide us to-day; make our wills Thy will, our ways 
Thy way.” 

And the tribe grew stronger and greater and wiser 
than all the other tribes of men. 


238 










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